Jordan, France sign judicial cooperation accord

May 4, 2009, 15:00 GMT

Amman- Jordan and France on Monday signed a protocol for legal and judicial cooperation, an official statement said.

The accord was signed by the Jordanian Justice Minister Ayman Odeh and his French counterpart Rachida Dati, who visited Jordan to take part in the Arab-European Conference for Judicial Training which opened in Amman earlier in the day.

The two ministers also held talks during which Jordan sought France's help in shifting supervision over Jordanian prisons from the Interior Ministry to the Justice Ministry, Odeh said.

'Such a step requires prior arrangements and we are going to make benefit from the French experiment in this respect,' he added.

Shifting responsibility over the country's jails from the Interior Ministry to the Justice Ministry surfaced over the past couple of days after the 2008 report of Jordan's National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) alleged continued violations at Jordanian prisons, including torture.