The Spanish F.I.E.S. isolation units are a method to control, isolate and torture prisoners that resist or struggle against the prison authority. F.I.E.S. units are a prison within the prison where the prisoner is kept isolated with no contact whatsoever with the rest of the prison population, even exercise is done in complete solitude, all visits are monitored and the number of letters received is strictly limited. The prisoner is stripped of all his/her personal belongings and kept in a bare cell where even the mattress is taken out during the day. F.I.E.S. units are an experiment of different degrees of psychological torture and dehumanisation of the individual together with regular and constant physical torture, beatings and insults. At least 20 prisoners have died or been killed since 1991 in F.I.E.S isolation units.
Prisoners and support groups are fighting for:
1. Efficient/effective medical attention
2. Free all prisoners with terminal illnesses
3. Abolition of these units and an end to the Isolation units F.I.E.S system
4. End of dispersion of prisoners (they should stay near their place of origin)
5. End of slave labour in prisons
6. End to sexual abuse in prisons and sexism
7. End to psychological and physical torture
8. An independent investigation of every death in prison
9. Against long term prison sentences (the longest people can spend in prison is 40 years at present)