President Peter Mutharika has pardoned 243 prisoners, a statement from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security has announced.<\/p>\n
According to the statement, Mutharika has pardoned the prisoners as part of the Republic celebrations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has pleased his Excellency the President, Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika to Pardon 243 prisoners as part of Republic Celebrations, the prisoners who have been pardoned are those who have served at least half of their prison sentences, with good behaviour and were not convicted of serious offences,\u201d reads part of the statement.<\/p>\n
It also says some prisoners have been considered for pardon because of their medical conditions.<\/p>\n
Centre for Human Rights Education Advice and Assistance (Chreaa) Executive Director, Victor Mhango, said Mutharika needs to consider pardoning more prisoners in order to decongest prisons.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch as we would like to congratulate the president for the gesture, the number of the pardoned prisoners is just too small considering how congested the country\u2019s prisons are. For example, our prisons were designed to accommodate about 5,000 inmates but at present they are accommodating over 14, 000.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe suggest that the president should consider pardoning 2000 to 3000 prisoners if current challenges in prisons, including shortage of food, are to reduce,\u201d Mhango said.<\/p>\n
Recently, some civil society organisations petitioned government asking it to look into issues affecting the country\u2019s prisons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Peter Mutharika has pardoned 243 prisoners, a statement from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security has announced. According to the statement, Mutharika has pardoned the prisoners as part of the Republic celebrations. \u201cIt has pleased his Excellency the President, Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika to Pardon 243 prisoners as part of Republic Celebrations, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28566,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28563\/revisions\/28566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}