Rights of Arrested Persons
Arbitrary arrest is illegal, but occurs, and although warrants are required under the law, most arrests are made without them, and some warrants were issued in irregular ways. In 2010, “nly high-profile cases that were scrutinized publicly were known to have been properly handled,” according to the U.S. State Department. Although the law requires that detainees be charged in court within 3 days of arrest (or, in some cases, 10), authorities routinely skirt this rule. The police lack equipment and are incapable of doing proper investigations or controlling riots. Police corruption is a major challenge, with officers dropping charges or making false arrests in return for payments, and demanding bribes at checkpoints on roads. Police brutality has declined, however, and so has impunity. Thanks to training in conduct and human rights, which is accomplished with the help of UN advisors, police are behaving more professionally and responsibly.
The 2011 annual report by the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone praised “the stride taken by SLP
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In Sierra Leone
Famous quotes containing the words rights, arrested and/or persons:
“All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Sabbath. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“As a novelist, I cannot occupy myself with “characters,” or at any rate central ones, who lack panache, in one or another sense, who would be incapable of a major action or a major passion, or who have not a touch of the ambiguity, the ultimate unaccountability, the enlarging mistiness of persons “in history.” History, as more austerely I now know it, is not romantic. But I am.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)