World's last Island-Prison : Coiba

I made this post as reply of an incredible prison collection in 2009. Now I am going to share it in this blog. Readers may find many content about this prison in web, because it is a popular place. 

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World's last Island-Prison : Coiba

Coiba - an island of Panama, once known as the devil's island, is the last prison island on the globe.

The island was made a penal colony in 1919 and played host to some 1.000 prisoners every year that spread over several prison camps. During the years that Panama was under the Dictatorships of Omar Torrijos and Manuel Noriega, the prison on Coiba was a feared place with a reputation for brutal conditions, extreme tortures, executions and political murder. 

Nobody knows exactly how many people were killed in the prison during this period, but sources claim that the number could be close to three hundred. As such, the island was avoided by locals, and other than the prison, was completely undeveloped.

Coiba Prison : Present situation of a penal colony
pix by : Alan Meiss from Flickr

Until the beginning of this year a few hundred prisoners still live in Coiba. They used to hunt and fished for their own food. The grew vegetables and took care of some livestock. Most of them lived in huts built by themselves in camps all over the island and spend years without seeing their families. The could move out around the camps, go to the rainforest or even swim in the ocean, and no lock huts were used at the beach camps.

Coiba Prison : Pix by : J.Pellice from Panoramio

The prison is now closed. The prisoners have been relocated to other facilities and anything of value has been removed from the site. The remaining structure is slowly being reclaimed by jungle and the marine air.The island was declared a National Park in 1992.UNESCO declared the entire Coiba National Park a "World Heritage Site" in July 2000

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Coiba | More photos | Official National Park web | Google Earth View