Prison C.E.O. Responds to Allegations of Human Rights Violation  

Earlier this week, we brought you a story that raised eyebrows, a local attorney claimed he was denied access to his client, who is currently detained under the State of Emergency. The attorney argued that this was a clear violation of his client’s right to legal representation. But today, we followed up with Virgilio Murillo, C.E.O. of the Kolbe Foundation, who offered a different explanation. According to Murillo, the prison simply follows the rules outlined under the State of Emergency regulations. Here’s how he explained the decision.

 

On the Phone: Virgillo Murillo, C.E.O., Kolbe Foundation

“I am not too sure if you read the regulation governing SOEs. All I can tell you is that although I am not a lawyer, I do have a proper command of the English language and what I read in the regulations is that when people are detained on a detention order signed by the minister, they are not entitled to bail and not even the high courts can summon that these people be brought before them for anything whatsoever. So that is what we have applied for any state of emergency taken place over the years, because remember SOE is nothing new to the prison. This is our tenth SOE. So we are too familiar with how we handle these things. The particular individual the attorney had asked to come and see had no criminal charges against him. So there was nothing against him and no legitimate reason for that attorney to come here, unless he wanted to come here and ease the tension on detention on him. I am not sure if that was the objective of the attorney.”