A Manila court ruled out Criminal Investigation and Detection Group’s (CIDG) request to transfer the detention of  Wilma Austria and Benito Tiamzon, alleged top leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines, from Camp Crame Custodial Center to a Bureau of Jail Management Penology prison facility.

In a hearing this morning for charges of multiple murder against the couple, Judge Thelma Medina of Regional Trial Court Branch 32 and in consonance with three other courts at issued commitment orders, ruled that  Tiamzon couple should be detained at Camp Crame General Headquarters of the Philippine National Police for being high value prisoners.

The CIDG argued that the PNP does not have the capacity to secure the Tiamzon couple and should therefore be transferred to the detention facility where the cases against them are filed. But this was strongly opposed by the couple’s legal counsel.

The couple’s counsel said that the claims of the CIDG contradicts the ‘elaborate’ preparations being made for high profile personalities involved in the pork barrel scam.

“The prospective jail cells for sitting senators in spanking new individual jail cells measuring 32 square meters each is in stark contrast to the cramped, humid and squalid separate cells of Benito Tiamzon and Wilma Austria Tiamzon barely measuring half this size,” said lawyer Edre Olalia, secretary general of the National Union of Peoples Lawyers (NUPL) and one of  Tiamzon couple’s legal counsel.

While human rights group Karapatan called on the Aquino government to stop the double standard treatment of prisoners.

“Peace consultants and other political prisoners as well as petty common crime prisoners are drawn to inhumane prisons to make way for a red carpet jail for senator criminals and other plunderers,” said Marie Hilao-Enriquez, Karapatan chairperson.

The group also called for the immediate release of Tiamzon couple and other political detainees.

The Tiamzons are also facing what human rights groups call “fabricated charges” of kidnapping with serious illegal detention at the Quezon City RTC, murder and frustrated murder in Laoang, Northern Samar and illegal possession of explosives in Toledo, Cebu.