Official: 358 killed in Honduras prison fire

Forensic workers carry away the body of an inmate who died in a prison fire in Comayagua, Honduras, 90 miles north of the capital, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Wednesday . At least 300 inmates were killed and 21 are injured, according to authorities.

COMAYAGUA, Honduras — Honduran officials confirmed Wednesday that 358 people died when a fire tore through an overcrowded prison, making it the world's deadliest prison fire in a century.

With 856 prisoners packed into barracks, the farm prison in the Comayagua province north of the capital was at double capacity, said Supreme Court Justice Richard Ordonez, who is leading the investigation.

Scorpenes graft: Official Secrets Act must make way for Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act is indeed a step in the right way for a government to be transparent and accountable to the people it serves. It allows the people of a nation to have knowledge on the dealings of the government it has installed to look into its welfare.

Yet in Malaysia, the Official Secrets Act (OSA) may go head to head with the proposed FOI Act. The Official Secrets Act (OSA) passed in 1972 states, “any document specified in the schedule and any information and material relating thereto and includes any other official document, information, and material as may be classified as ‘Top Secret’, ‘Confidential’, ‘Secret’, or ‘Restricted’, as the case may be, by a minister, the Menteri Besar or Chief Minister of a state or such public officer appointed under section 2B”.

In 1983, a provision was added to the OSA that makes it an offense to not report anyone seeking official Information. If charged for not reporting foul play, the accused will face an $8600 fine and/or a 5-year prison sentence.

Under the OSA, the government can classify any document as “Secret” and this is a point of contention for the FOI Act. By implementing the FOI Act, the provision that allows this has to be removed and replaced with instead by a list of documents that can be classified secret.