Bad apples within

It is a truism that workforces everywhere are a reflection of the cultures and societies they recruit from. There are real and present dangers attached to this phenomenon when the recruitment pool contains radicalised and extremist elements. The military have recognised this and attempt to screen out potentially high-risk recruits, or those with a susceptibility to radicalisation. Whether the prison service does the same is unknown to us and we would welcome a statement on the matter, but a serious and risk-laden breach of protocols has been exposed in Sindh.

The Sindh Home Department has suspended (note suspended and not sacked) the senior jail superintendent of Sukkur Prison for allowing militants who are inmates to use official telephones to make external calls. A Taliban leader named as Fazal and other Jihadi prisoners had been allowed to make calls and these had been traced by investigators. Astonishingly this is not the first time this same man has been investigated for similar infractions as well as his involvement in financial irregularities. A court has labelled him as a ‘corrupt official’ and the greatest mystery surrounding the entire affair is why this man has, so far, retained his position.

The dangers are blindingly obvious. The men making the calls are in prison because they are either convicted of offences that are extremist and terror related, or they are awaiting trial for similar. It is difficult to believe that they are making innocent calls to friends and family, and equally difficult to believe that the senior jail superintendent allowed the calls to be made out of the kindness of his heart. He is a bad apple, and who knows how many other bad apples there are in the barrel as he is unlikely to be alone. Nothing short of a searching inquiry followed by the necessary action is going to suffice, and this to run in parallel with an in-depth scrutiny of the vulnerabilities of prison staff from top to bottom. With around 30 terrorists in Sukkur Prison the queue to use the phone must be long. We hope that henceforward their wait will be in vain.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 13^th, 2017.

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