TNAG-0559-FCO40-654-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-into-othe-1975 — Page 138

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attitude towards the imposition of the death sentence for the crime of smuggling cloves, the island's main cash crop. In August 1974 President Jumbe pardoned 15 clove smugglers who had been caught in 1972 and subsequently sentenced to death. But in March 1975 four people were sentenced to death for clove smuggling after pleading guilty in the Zanzibar High Court. The sentences have yet to be carried out at the time of writing (May 1975).

An AI adoption group in Denmark continued to handle the case of Nasreen Mohammed Hussein, a Zanzibari woman of Persian descent who was abducted and forcibly married in September 1970 on the orders of the ruling Revolutionary Council. In November 1974 a group of women members of the Danish Parliament appealed to Presidents Jumbe and Nyerere to speed her release.

Togo

During early 1974 Amnesty International groups worked on the cases of two persons who had been held without trial in Lomé, the Togolese capital, since August 1973. In June 1974 one of these prisoners was freed.

Sixteen political prisoners were released in October 1974, but a number still remain in prison. The Research Department is trying to obtain further information about them so that their adoption may be considered.

Tunisia

In May 1975 Amnesty International groups were working actively on more than 40 adoption and investigation cases in Tunisia. A number of these cases date from a wave of arrests which began in November 1973, while others concern individuals who were detained in September and October 1974.

Political prisoners are held in the Prison Centrale in Tunis, at the prison of Borj el Roumi near Bizerte, and, in the case of women, at La Manouba prison. Con- ditions in all three prisons are reported to be poor, with insufficient diet and medical care.

During February 1975 political detainees in the three prisons staged a hunger strike in order to obtain the status of "politicals”, the abolition of solitary confinement and other concessions. Simultaneously AI launched a postcard cam- paign on behalf of a long-term prisoner, Ahmed Ben Othman, who has been severely tortured. Reports in March 1975 said that the prisoners had succeeded in gaining some concessions and that Mr Ben Othman's solitary confinement had been lifted.

A major political trial took place in Tunis during August 1974, involving 202 persons charged with plotting against the internal security of the state, reconstitu- ting a banned organization and diffusing false information likely to disturb the public order. Monique Desforges, a French lawyer, attended the trial as AI's observer, but was expelled as were all other judicial observers. A further trial, involving some individuals who were given suspended sentences or sentenced in absentia at the August trial, occurred in late March 1975. The AI Research Depart- ment is at present assembling data on the prisoners sentenced in these two trials with a view towards adopting them.