His Majesty King Abdullah on Sunday ordered the shut down of the Jafr prison and transform the facility into a school and a vocational training centre.

“I directed the government to immediately close down the Jafr prison and coordinate with the Public Security Department [PSD] to improve the infrastructure of correctional and rehabilitation centres,” King Abdullah told senior officials, including Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit, at the National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) during a visit.

Reiterating his support for the centre, the King called on the government to deal with NCHR reports in a “serious and transparent way”.

PSD Director Lt. General Mohammad Aitan told reporters that Jafr will be closed today and inmates will be transferred to other correctional facilities.

NCHR President Ahmad Obeidat, who highlighted the centre's achievements in the past four years to enhance human rights in Jordan, hailed the decision.

Human rights activists as well as local and foreign NGOs, including NCHR, have demanded the shut down of Jafr because of “its poor services and evidence of human rights violations and torture”.

According to Aitan, the PSD was working hard to upgrade prisons and announced that new correctional facilities were expected to be opened in 2007 and 2008.

“We have a strategic plan to improve the situation of prisons and allocated JD24 million to implement it. The main problem is crowdedness and once we overcome this issue, other problems will be solved gradually,” Aitan said.

The Jordan Times