July 29, 2008	Tuesday	Rajab 25, 1429

PARIS, July 28: The UN Human Rights Committee has slammed France’s immigration policies and expressed concern about overcrowding and poor conditions in its prisons, according to documents seen on Monday by newsmen.

It also asked France to re-examine a new law under which people deemed a threat to society can be kept in prison — possibly for the rest of their lives -- even after they have served out their full sentence.

The criticisms came in a text dated July 22 addressed to the French state by the Geneva-based international committee of jurists.

It “noted with concern” that many asylum-seekers and would-be immigrants were held in what it called “inappropriate premises” in airports and elsewhere.

It regretted that France had not opened any enquiries into allegations of ill-treatment of foreigners in prisons and so-called “retention centres” where asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants are held. Nor, said the document by the committee, did French authorities “punish as is fitting the authors” of such ill-treatment.

French authorities also failed to properly inform people held in these centres of their rights, such as their right to request asylum, and they also sent people back to their home countries even when “their integrity was in danger” there, it said.—AFP