Spain Uses Interpreters to Monitor Muslim Inmates

By Al-Amin Andalusi, IOL Correspondent

MADRID, July 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Spain has appointed for the first time 30 Arabic-language interpreters in prisons to translate mails and monitor conversations of prisoners of North African and Arab descent.

The Prisons Directorate said in a statement that the bilingual translators would be chiefly concentrated in prisons with a large number of prisoners suspected of belonging to militant groups and civil offenders.

It said 27 interpreters will translate prisoners’ mails and logs or letters they write in their cells. The rest will be assigned with translating phone calls made by inmates and their recorded daily conversations.

A report by intelligence services triggered the move, as it warned of "sleeper cells" inside prisons planning to bomb public places, chiefly the State Security Court and Spain’s second largest football pitch Santiago Bernabéu.

But IOL correspondent says that these schemes are not authentic due to misinterpretation of prisoners’ conversations and messages, which prompted prison authorities to hire translators.

Unqualified

Unqualified and unprofessional translators working for the government have made a catalogue of grave mistakes in interpreting statements made by Arab and North African prisoners, including Al-Jazeera’s correspondent Taysir Allouni who frequently lashed out at the poor and inaccurate translations.

One of the embarrassing mistakes is translating the name of prominent Muslim scholar Imam Al-Nawawi as a “nuclear bomb of Al-Qaeda” as the Arabic pronunciation of the scholar’s name is similar to the world “Nawawi,” which means nuclear.

The move further came against a backdrop of a racist attack by prison inmates against the suspected leader of Al-Qaeda in Spain Friday, July 15.

Prison officials said Syrian-born Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, also known as Abu Dahdah, was attacked while eating breakfast and was taken to hospital after he was seriously injured.

The attack was harshly criticized by the opposition parties, which called for sacking the director of prisons and isolating the inmates responsible for the attacks.

Yarkas is awaiting a verdict after being tried for allegedly helping the hijackers plan the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. If convicted he could be sentenced to life imprisonment.

He is one of 24 suspected Al-Qaeda members who were on trial in Madrid between April and July.

Spain suffered its own Al-Qaeda-linked attacks on March 11, 2004, when 191 people were killed when 10 simultaneous bombs tore through four packed commuter trains.

The grisly attacks were strongly condemned by the Muslim minority in the country, who distances themselves from “criminals” acting in the name of Islam.

In the wake of the Madrid attacks, however, the number of Muslim prison inmates has doubled. Official prison estimates said Muslims make up now 70 percent of inmates in the country’s overcrowded prisons.

Before 1990, there was only 1,000 Muslim prisoners in the country, mostly charged with drug trafficking and illegal immigration.

Spain has a Muslim minority of about 600,000 people out of a total population of 40 million. Some 94 percent of its population are Christian Catholics.

The country has recognized Islam through the law of religious freedom, issued in July 1967.