Investigators at the Interior Ministry have brought a group of witnesses and plaintiffs to a safe place in order to conduct additional questioning in the investigation of an embattled Ratanakiri prison director accused of a slew of crimes, including having sex with an inmate, using prison land to build a house and using prison labor for personal gain.

Nuth Savana, the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior’s General Prison Department, said his investigators had returned to Phnom Penh after a three-day investigation that ended on Wednesday. The investigators went to Ratanakiri after 32 members of the prison staff signed a complaint against director Tin Sovanny. 

“They have already arrived in Phnom Penh, but they are still doing more investigating and questioning the witnesses and plaintiffs,” said Mr. Savana. “We moved them to a new place for their safety and where they are not afraid of telling the truth.”

Mr. Savana declined to say how many people had been moved. 

The December 6 complaint against Mr. Sovanny accused the director of using the prison for his own benefit by charging prisoners for electricity, using inmates as cleaners, and even paying a female inmate for sex.

Mr. Sovanny has denied all of the allegations made against him by the group of prison officers and is deciding whether or not he will file a complaint against his accusers. 

“There’s a lot of rumors about me in the province now,” he said. “People said my deputy [prison director] was arrested and brought to Phnom Penh but in fact they came to have a meeting at the Ministry of Interior.” 

Adhoc Provincial Coordinator Chhay Ty said that after the authorities conducted an investigation, they brought the deputy prison director, who is one of plaintiffs in the case, and a prisoner who accused Mr. Sovanny of rape, to Phnom Penh for more questions. 

“I hope that the Ministry of Interior will work to provide justice to victims,” Mr. Ty said. “If not, they won’t be able to change that prison.”

Problems at Ratanakiri’s Provincial Prison have been commonplace.

In January 2011, Yoeung Baloung, the former police chief of Ratanakiri province who was supposed to be serving 13 years in prison on charges related to illegal logging, was in a collision following an evening of carousing in the province’s O’Chum district. And in October 2014, six inmates escaped from the prison by cutting off iron bars and breaking a prison gate to escape.

 
According to a January 2015 report from human rights group Licadho called “Rights at a Price: Life Inside Cambodia’s Prisons,” abuse, discrimination, exploitation and corruption are endemic in Cambodia’s prisons, spurred on by judicial and penal systems “driven by nepotism.”

From Khmer Times