Khaki uniform, weekly shower and legal ID photo: deposed South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is subject to the same Spartan regime in prison as other inmates, a prison official said on Monday.
The former star prosecutor was arrested on January 15. He is the target of several investigations, including one for “rebellion”, a crime punishable by death, for having declared martial law by surprise on December 3. A coup that was quickly thwarted, but which plunged his country into political chaos.
On Sunday, a Seoul court extended his detention to 20 days by issuing a so-called formal arrest warrant against him, fearing he might destroy evidence. Yoon Suk-yeol then officially became a suspect in a criminal case.
The conservative leader, South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested, was moved to a 12-square-meter cell at the Uiwang detention center on the outskirts of Seoul on Sunday, the chief services commissioner said. corrections, Shin Yong-hae. It is one of the “standard rooms used by regular detainees,” Shin Yong-hae explained during a parliamentary hearing.
This cell is of a similar size to that in which former presidents of the country were incarcerated, he stressed. There is a table, a shelf, a sink, a toilet and a television, officials said, but viewing time is limited.
-Yoon Suk-yeol must ditch his civilian clothes for a khaki prison uniform and wear an inmate number, according to prison rules, which specify that inmates are allowed an hour’s walk daily and a weekly shower. The head of state also took his passport photo and underwent a medical examination, Shin Yong-hae said. “The individual cooperated well,” he said.
Yoon Suk-yeol has been suspended since MPs adopted the impeachment motion against him. However, he remains the titular president pending the Constitutional Court ratifying this sanction and definitively dismissing him or reinstating him in his functions. The court has until mid-June to do this.
After the pre-dawn announcement on Sunday of the extension of their leader’s detention, around 300 furious pro-Yoon people rushed to the entrance to the court and began “throwing objects such as glass bottles, stones and chairs,” according to a police report consulted by AFP. “Some 100 protesters” “broke the ground floor windows, damaged the walls and entered the interior,” the authority reported. Yoon Suk-yeol declined to be interviewed Monday, his lawyers said. The entity in charge of investigations (CIO) says it plans to summon him “forcibly”.
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