ZAMBIA: FORMER DEATH ROW INMATE TELLS OF CONDITIONS

the common prayer of those on Zambia’s jam-packed death row is for divine intervention to end their hell on earth and let the waiting hangman carry out his job speedily, according to a recently released inmate. "It is so painful to be in suspense, we would pray to be hanged," Churchill Malama, 33, said. Malama spent three years on death row in the Mukobeko Maximum Security Prison, located in the central town of Kabwe. His death sentence for murder was overturned by the Supreme Court last March. He described as "painful and degrading" the living conditions for the condemned, crammed into the 48 cells on death row: "Each cell, measuring just two-and-a-half metres by two metres, is supposed to have just one or two inmates, but there were five or six of us with two mattresses to share." There was no sanitation or ventilation. "We improvised toilets by cutting up five or two-and-a-half litre plastic containers for human waste. It was traumatic," Malama said. During the day, death row inmates -- totalling 306 at the time of his release -- were let out of their cells. But the space where they could circulate was only three metres wide and 30 metres long, he said.