HMP Belmarsh
Her Majesty's Prison Belmarsh ( HMP Belmarsh ) is a prison in the Thamesmead district of the Royal Borough of Greenwich in the British capital, London . The facility, with a capacity for 910 inmates , is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service , the top penal service in England and Wales .
The prison, which opened on April 2, 1991, serves mainly as a regional and remand prison for the Central Criminal Court in London and the district courts in south-east London. It also serves as a local and remand prison for courts in the southwestern part of Essex . There are also high-security sections ( Category A ) on the extensive prison grounds, in which prisoners are housed who are classified as particularly dangerous by the prison authorities. These departments house offenders from across the UK .
The journalist and author Kai Biermann and the award-winning journalist Holger Stark write on Zeit Online : “The maximum security prison Belmarsh, located in south-east London, was once built for terrorists and other serious criminals, former fighters of the Northern Irish IRA are imprisoned here and notorious Islamists . Because of the harsh prison conditions, the prison is also called the 'British version of Guantánamo Bay '. "
Since April 2019 sits Julian Assange ( investigative journalist and Australian political activist ) in HMP Belmarsh in custody pending extradition .
Web links
- Belmarsh Prison information website on the UK Department of Justice's website.
- Inspection reports of prison guards ( Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons ) to HMP Belmarsh.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Holger Stark, Kai Biermann: 175 years in prison. In: The time . February 5, 2020, accessed July 16, 2020 .
- ↑ Sven Lemke Meyer: How UN expert Melzer relieved Wikileaks founder Assange. In: Der Tagesspiegel . February 9, 2020, accessed March 18, 2020 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 47 " N , 0 ° 5 ′ 34.4" E