STEVEN Bryant is in his third prison and now has a cell to himself. But he is one of only two Englishmen among the 2,500 inmates.o

Describing the "crazy" conditions in a previous prison, he told the Guardian: "The rooms we were in, we had 20 beds with 20 people, and then they put ten people more on the floor.

"You have one toilet, you can't get to the toilet, they're mixing all the prisoners together so that you've got the Muslims getting up at three in the morning to pray. You can't get a full night's sleep.

"Because I always protest they decided to send me to the central prison (where he is now) which nobody is ever sent to when you've only got two years left to serve.

"In this prison there's about 2,500 people, 2,470 of them are all for murder. I'm here with people with life sentences, death sentences, Algerian terrorists, Muslim fundamentalists you name it all the worst people are in this prison.

"But I've ended up with this cell on my own which is worth a lot just to be away from all these people. So as far as that goes having a cell on my own is good for my head.

"But people still sleep on floors, they walk around picking up cigarette butts because they've got nothing. The 'crazies' are kept here as well and everybody is all mixed together."

d=3,4Mr Bryant, who is serving a ten-year sentence for a drugs offence he has repeatedly denied after drugs were found in his lorry added: "They either send you here because they can't handle you or you fight for your rights and they send you here as well.

"The final straw was when I was at Rabat. There was one Columbian guy in the room and he just lost it. He took a knife and tried to stab himself. Then he took a fork and tried to stab himself. We'd be sleeping and he'd put a fire on and just walk away and leave it.

"Instead of taking him out and putting him with the psychiatrists they left him in the room leaving the prisoners with the responsibility of looking after him, making sure he doesn't kill himself.

"So I protested about this, which I think I had the right to, and I told the Consulate I wanted it put on record because six months before a Dutch prisoner died, he was asthmatic. He died at 3am but they didn't come to take the body out until 9am when the authorities arrived.

"Then the police did an investigation asking if anybody had beat him so they could put the fault down to somebody else and it wasn't down to the fact that he hadn't received his medication."

David Cook, from Abridge who is a friend of Mr Bryant's from his time as a lorry driver and his wife Donna have been in regular contact with Mr Bryant, backing his efforts for freedom.

Donna Cook told the Guardian: "I can't believe how strong he's remained. He's been fighting the whole time to prove his innocence."

November 15, 2001 8:21