People are being locked away in Victoria Prison without trial, on the orders of

BY the time the first guard inspected Cell 23, the man inside had been screaming for nearly 10 minutes and the air was heavy with smoke and the stench of burning flesh. Evis Ose, 32, had earlier told prison authorities he would commit suicide. But after a few hours inside the prison hospital he was put back in the jail's main section. He was left on his own for 12 hours a day in a cell with his cigarettes - and matches.

The chaotic scenes of near-panic witnessed by prisoners when the guards finally noticed the billowing smoke on the second floor of E Hall led many of them to the same conclusion: the dismal response contributed to the agonising burns Ose suffered.

He died 10 days later, on August 13, never emerging from his coma, three-quarters of his skin burned off and with acute kidney failure arising from the infection.

Two inquiries are already under way. But there is one key question the Correctional Services Department (CSD) and the coroner's inquest are unlikely to ask: why is Victoria Prison stuffed far beyond its certified capacity with inmates - like Ose - whose liberty has never been considered by any court? More than half the people behind its walls are held under a law that allows government officials to simply sign a piece of paper keeping foreign nationals locked up indefinitely pending deportation or for other immigration reasons, such as verification of their identity. Even those who have been convicted have served their sentence - and if they were Hong Kong permanent residents they would have been free.

It is Monday morning, eight o'clock in the men's Day Room deep in the lower levels of Victoria Prison, which opened in 1841 and is still going strong. Outside, the streets of Mid-Levels are full of office workers hurrying down to Central to work. But in the Day Room 70 men, mostly Africans or from the Indian sub-continent, are perched on narrow wooden benches. A few small windows and some swishing fans provide a little ventilation, inadequate when the temperature rises above 30 degrees Celsius at midday.

If they sit cross-legged a guard may tell them to sit straight. If they doze off, they will be woken up. There is no library. Despite a big sign near the entrance stating that all inmates should get 'timely, apt and comprehensive rehabilitation programmes', there is no work and no education.

Instead, the CSD has provided them with a single television set.