DAILY STAR - Gitarama Prison in Rwanda - Cannibal prison has lags forced to eat each other to survive and reeks of rotting flesh. WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT: Filthy and brutal conditions plague a Rwandan prison feared to be the most inhumane in the world as inmates who could be innocent eat rotting corpses to stay alive.

Gitarama prison in Rwanda: Prisoners survive by resorting to cannibalism in Gitarama (Image: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images).

A barbaric prison in Africa is hell on Earth with people able to smell the stench of rotting flesh from dead corpses inside its walls as far as a mile away.

Inmates of the Rwanda prison Gitarama, one of the world's deadliest, are forced to eat the rotting corpses of other inmates in order to survive.

The unimaginable jail on the outskirts of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, was built in 1960 as housing for British workers. It was later converted into a jail designed to hold around 400 prisoners at the time.

The troubling conditions mean inmates are often left with no choice but to stand due to a lack of space, with as many as 8,000 trapped inside despite the prison's capacity currently being somewhere between 1,300 and 3,000.

Gitarama prison: Prisoners have been forced to sleep in human sewage with no other choice (Image: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images).

At its peak capacity, after the Rwandan genocide of the mid-1990s, the prison was estimated to hold closer to 50,000 inmates in squalid conditions.

More than 1,000 men are reported to have died in Gitarama in 1995 alone. Even today, the stink of faeces and rotting flesh is said to be detectable up to a mile away.

Reports state that multiple prisoners a day can die in the Gitarama jail due to the foul conditions. It's also been reported there is no sewer system meaning convicts must trawl barefoot through their own faeces or sleep soaked in sewage.

And with no medical care, health conditions take lives daily as do gangs who are free to commit brutal crimes against those who disagree with them. Many inmates in the prison are still awaiting trial.

More than 1,000 men are reported to have died in Gitarama in 1995 alone (Image: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images).

Human rights organisations have protested against the deplorable conditions inside the jail over the decades but have failed to succeed in improving conditions.

Switzerland-based International Bridges to Justice is just one organisation that has campaigned to end the savage treatment of detainees inside the prison, some of whom have waited without trial for as long as 16 years.

It said: "Ordinary men, women and children facing charges can wait in legal purgatory indefinitely, with little if not no access to family, medical assistance, and legal counsel.

"Some have been imprisoned for 16 years without an expected date of trial. It does not have to be that way. We seek to decongest Gitarama Prison and ensure timely, fair trials for detainees."

Prisoners waiting inside Gitarama to be transferred to court in 2003 (Image: DDP/AFP via Getty Images).

With some of the inmates serving life sentences after having committed the most deplorable crimes (in some cases serving multiple life sentences) it's widely thought they have 'nothing to lose' so commit more heinous acts to earn respect from fellow criminals.

Lt-Col Charles Kayonga, commander of Gitarama in the mid-1990s, heartbreakingly admitted it was quite possible that some of the inmates were innocent.

”It's possible some are innocent. I'm not saying our methods were always thorough," he said. "But the vast majority of these people are killers.”

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