Geisha Kow­lessar

Once the state of emer­gency ex­pires next Mon­day, the 16 de­tainees can be re­leased from prison as ear­ly one minute past mid­night on Mon­day. Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er, Mar­tin Mar­tinez, said yes­ter­day once the emer­gency end­ed arrange­ments would be made to have all 16 set free as ear­ly as pos­si­ble, once no charges were laid. Mar­tinez, how­ev­er, said the di­rec­tive to re­lease the de­tainees would have to come from na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty au­thor­i­ties. He ex­plained the nor­mal pro­ce­dure was to have a pris­on­er set free im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter serv­ing the stip­u­lat­ed sen­tence. He added: "Once the state of emer­gency comes to an end the de­ten­tion or­ders have ex­pired we will make every ef­fort to have the de­tainees re­leased.

"But be­fore that is done we will have to get au­tho­ri­sa­tion from the po­lice and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies." He al­so main­tained that some of the de­tainees were be­ing held at the Gold­en Grove Prison, Arou­ca, and not at the East­ern De­tec­tion Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, San­ta Rosa, Ari­ma, as stip­u­lat­ed on the de­ten­tion or­ders. "To my knowl­edge none of the de­tainees are at San­ta Rosa. They are all with­in the prison sys­tem, in­clud­ing Gold­en Grove," Mar­tinez added.

Pris­ons sources said the de­tainees were sep­a­rat­ed through­out the pris­ons sys­tem and were placed in sep­a­rate cells be­cause of the na­ture of the of­fence. That al­so en­sured that the de­tainees had no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with each oth­er, sources added. Sources said while the de­ten­tion or­der was be­ing draft­ed the in­ten­tion was to house the in­mates at the San­ta Rosa fa­cil­i­ty but it was not ready in time for such high-risk pris­on­ers. Mar­tinez al­so main­tained that the 16 de­tainees would be "treat­ed like any oth­er in­mate" who en­tered the pris­ons sys­tem.

"They are be­ing treat­ed like nor­mal pris­on­ers. There is no pref­er­en­tial treat­ment be­ing giv­en to any de­tainee," Mar­tinez added. Ques­tioned whether there was ad­e­quate pris­ons of­fi­cers to prop­er­ly guard all de­tainees, es­pe­cial­ly those iden­ti­fied in an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and three of her Cab­i­net col­leagues, Mar­tinez as­sured there was ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty. He added that his of­fi­cers were well pre­pared to han­dle any even­tu­al­i­ty.