On resort island, detained illegal migrants complain of abuse

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Thu, Jan. 27, 2005

On resort island, detained illegal migrants complain of abuse

BY JOE MOZINGO
Knight Ridder Newspapers

NASSAU, Bahamas - (KRT) - In a place where tourists come to lounge on the beach and sip rum drinks, illegal Cuban and Haitian migrants in a government detention center claim that they are regularly beaten while handcuffed, subjected to extortion and denied clean water and medical treatment.

"They beat us like dogs," said Alexi Leon Ortuota, a 33-year-old Cuban detainee. "They don't give us soap or drinking water. They give us nothing."

The allegations by inmates during a Miami Herald visit to the Carmichael Detention Centre were backed by a Jamaican and a Briton recently held there. And Amnesty International has reported detainee complaints that guards beat them, forced several to eat off the ground, raped two women and subjected two Cuban men to mock executions.
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"We are not criminals," David Martinez Perez, 37, said in an interview in his cell at Fox Hill, where six inmates share one cell with four beds. "We didn't commit a crime. We are immigrants. This is inhuman."
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http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/world/10747650.htm