Danish whistleblower complains re prison conditions

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Monday September 08, 2008 22:52

by Coilín ÓhAiseadha

086 060 38 18

Unduly harsh on daughter of widower Grevil

A Danish military intelligence whistleblower has complained that the Danish prison service has been unfair in imprisoning him at a distance from his 15-year-old daughter.
Frank Grevil has been imprisoned at Horserød Prison since June this year, as punishment for leaking documents which showed that the Danish Defence Intelligence Service did not share the government's conviction that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction at the time of Denmark's invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Frank Grevil Danish intelligence whistleblower

The following is an excerpt from an English translation of Charlotte Aagaard's report in the Danish independent newspaper, Information:

Frank Grevil complains about imprisonment conditions
By Charlotte Aagaard
...
Former intelligence officer Frank Grevil has complained to the Ombudsman concerning the failure of the Prison Service to take into account his role as sole provider for his 15-year-old daughter. Grevil, who is currently serving a four-month sentence for passing on a number of classified Iraq threat assessments to the press, feels that he is the victim of discriminatory treatment on the part of the Prison Service.

Despite several applications for visits to family-oriented prison hostels near Copenhagen, the Prison Service has insisted that the former intelligence service analyst and WMD specialist must serve his sentence in Horserød State Prison near Helsingør, where he cannot have daily contact with his daughter.

"If it were up to the Danish Prison Service, I would be sent to the Mid-Jutland State Prison in Nørre Snede - four hours from our home. The Service requested this several times, but after protests, I ended up in Horserød. That is naturally better, but the best solution would have been a prison hostel, where I would have been able to see my daughter every day. As things are, the Prison Service has quite deliberately deprived a 15-year-old of contact with her only parent," says Grevil, a widower. He explains how his daughter now has only a neighbour to comfort her, as her grandfather had died suddenly the previous week.

"I was only told of the death myself the next day, so I couldn't be with her when she needed me," he continues, adding that it resembled "a political decree" to ensure that he received the maximum punishment.

...

Grevil's lawyer, Bjørn Elmquist, calls his client's treatment "very unusual". "I cannot document this, but it seems as though his applications for pardon, delay and permission to serve his sentence in a prison family hostel have been handled unfairly," he said, adding that although Grevil's daughter is 15, "a teenage girl still needs parental care."

...

English translation copyright 2008 by Billy O'Shea www.oshea.dk

Source report in Danish:
Frank Grevil klager over afsoning
http://www.information.dk/164543