CNRP president Kem Sokha can get his wish for a speedy trial if he goes back to jail, as the courts are prioritizing cases for those detained in the country’s overcrowded prisons, Justice Ministry spokesperson Chin Malin said on Friday.
The prisons department says it still has not conducted any Covid-19 testing for prisoners, who are showing some symptoms of coughing, fevers and runny noses due to changing weather, even though the latest local cluster originated from the prisons director’s family.
Four new Covid-19 cases in the local “November 28” cluster were announced Friday, with the Health Ministry saying that according to its analysis the cluster is unrelated to the visit of Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto last month.
No prisoners have been tested for Covid-19 despite contact with an infected department director, even as more than 250 prison officers at the same Phnom Penh facilities have received tests due to the risk of contagion, officials said.
A rights monitor questioned the Phnom Penh Municipal Court’s decision to last week hold a mass trial of opposition supporters as the court announced that trials for defendants in the capital’s prisons will be postponed through at least December 14 amid Covid-19 fears.
UPDATED 5:45 p.m. — The country’s prisons director, his wife and four of their family members have tested positive for Covid-19 with the source of their infection unknown, and Phnom Penh’s Aeon Mall I has been temporarily closed following a visit by the director’s wife, the Health Ministry said Sunday morning.
A news publisher has been sentenced to 18 months in prison over criticisms of Prime Minister Hun Sen in several social media posts.
More than 1,400 female and juvenile prisoners have been evacuated from Prey Sar Prison’s Correctional Center 2 and squeezed into Phnom Penh’s other overcrowded prisons amid flooding over the past two weeks, officials said on Tuesday.
The Justice Ministry said it has cleared 8,000 backlogged court cases, though closure eludes a defendant with a 12-year-old charge.
The family of a jailed woman who died while in state custody in Ratanakiri is seeking answers about her cause of death and alleging foul play, while officials say she fell in a prison bathroom and died of a stroke or heart attack.
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