Tanzania pardons prisoners

2004-04-26 20:22

Dar Es Salaam - Tanzania's President Benjamin Mkapa has pardoned more than 4 000 prisoners to mark the 40th anniversary of the nation's creation after the union of then Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Home Affairs Minister Omar Ramadhan Mapuri said on Monday.

Mapuri said the 4 485 prisoners were jailed for less than three years or had served long jail terms with less than three years remaining and had demonstrated good conduct.

There are at least 45 000 prisoners in Tanzania's mainland jails which have a capacity of 22 000 prisoners.

"It is a good gesture," Mapuri said on telephone. "The prisons are congested."

Mapuri said the presidential parole covered prisoners on mainland Tanzania.

The pardon excluded prisoners on death row and those serving life terms, including those whose death penalties were commuted.

It was not immediately possible to establish whether there were prisoners pardoned in Zanzibar.

During the celebration, which took place in Zanzibar, Mkapa said that critics of the union were "like a man who cut the branch he was sitting on a tree."

He said the union allowed Zanzibaris and those from the mainland to work and settle anywhere within the union.

Zanzibar united with Tanganyika to form the united republic of Tanzania on April 26, 1964, three months after a bloody revolution on the archipelago that ousted the islands' Omani rulers.

- AP