Danilo Reyes, Programme Officer, Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
As a reporter for a local newspaper in Mindanao during the late 1990s, rushing to the sites of bombings was part of my routine work. The higher the number of people killed, the quicker I would arrive at the scene and get exclusive information on the identity of the bomber. Often I raised no questions about how the police could identify with certainty the bombers, their motives and their hideouts within a few hours. Nor did it matter to me at all if what they said was believable or not. I was just after headlines.
Whatever the police said about details of the bombing and the suspects, I reported. However, when bomb suspects in the custody of the police and soldiers would claim torture, I doubted—not because I did not believe them, but because that is how I was taught and trained as journalist. My training in journalism was that the police version of the story, as against that of the defendants, weighed more because it was ‘official’; it came from ‘persons in authority’. Unconsciously, after a year of covering bomb blasts and hearing suspects claiming torture, I developed the attitude of not taking torture complaints seriously. Police investigators put it, “The suspects always complain of torture,” and it was safe for me and safe for my paper to go along with this. Anyway, we had our story.
To go against this arrangement would have been very difficult. To write about detainees’ allegations of torture and to question the legal flaws in how the police arrested suspects and collected evidence as part of their investigation was not in my training. I doubt my editors would have agreed to publish such articles (my editor and I did not have a thorough discussion on how to deal with this type of situation). In small cities and communities where journalists, police, soldiers and others in official circles know each other personally, it is extremely difficult not to compromise to some extent. So, the stories of detainees, whom I also managed to interview while in police custody, I invariably omitted from my articles for fear of legal and security implications, and so that the paper could retain good relations with its sources among officials.
The GenSan Three: Exonerated after an eight-year trial
For these reasons, I had never thought that I would get involved in a case of illegal arrest, detention and torture like that of the GenSan Three. The case began on 24 April 2002. I cannot forget that day, when I went to the investigation section of the General Santos City Police Office, where I saw the three torture victims, Jejhon Macalinsal, Abubakar Amilhasan and Arsul Ginta. I was struggling to comprehend why Jejhon, an activist whom I interviewed on many occasions during protests and demonstrations, was now a bomber.
Before I went to see the police investigators for an interview, I had limited details as to the suspects for the Fitmart Mall bomb blast, which occurred three days before, on April 21. A friend who worked for a local television station had told me that the arrestees were fall guys and the police planted evidence on them. He covered the police operations in the case, since police usually want television reporters and their cameras present when they think that they can get some good publicity.
Police Superintendent Bartolome Baluyot, former regional director of the Philippine National Police, led the police operations to arrest and conduct searches at the victims’ place in Barangay Calumpang, General Santos City. It was him who also announced in public that the three were responsible for the bomb blast. However, the police did not prosecute the victims for murder because they had no evidence that could prove that they were the bombers. But whether they were responsible for the bomb blast or not no longer mattered anymore. The community already believed, after the media reports, that the police had arrested the culprits.
![]()
(General Santos City police director Senior Superintendent Jorge Aquisap interrogates the GenSan Three, from left, Arsul Ginta, Abubakar Amihalsan and Jehjon Macalinsan on 24 April 2002 (AFP PHOTO))
In public the police did an excellent job of solving the case. My contemporaries in the local media, who also write for the national media, made headlines of the story. While the police, particularly P/Supt. Baluyot, enjoyed being interviewed by one radio and television station after the other, phone calls between newspaper journalists mentioned commendations from their superiors for their job well done. The three victims, their families and those helping them were hardly heard. Their complaints of being tortured were largely ignored; their allegations of arrests and searches done illegally and of their valuables being stolen by policemen during the raids were never aired in broadcasts or printed in newspapers.
Most in the local media who reported the claims of the policemen that they had arrested the bombers, including me, were not aware about P/Supt. Baluyot’s past record and about the reason that he was assigned to Mindanao. The province is a dumping ground for ranking police and soldiers with records of human rights violations, including use of torture and planting of evidence on arrestees. P/Supt. Baluyot, it turns out, was one of these.
It was only in June 2007, over four years after I ceased writing for a local newspaper, that I came to know that P/Supt. Baluyot was one of the policemen investigated for allegedly torturing the Abadilla Five, whose case is mentioned below. P/Supt. Baluyot was part of “Task Force Rolly”, a special police task force, who illegally arrested, detained and tortured the suspects in the murder of Col. Rolando Abadilla in June 1996.
But even if I knew of P/Supt. Baluyot’s past record at the time the GenSan Three victims were arrested, it would have been difficult for me to expose him. The police would have subjected me to isolation, would have refused requests for interviews and to have access to the police records, or could have filed libel charges against me if I had made any accusations. I had already been charged with libel when I was still writing for a local newspaper.
Perhaps it was for my own good that I did not know about P/Supt. Baluyot’s past record. Firstly, had I known about it early, I would have felt tremendous guilt if I did nothing, or I would have had to endure the unbearable feeling of not being able to do anything; secondly, I felt exonerated that my strong belief at the time that the three were innocent and that the police had indeed tortured, illegally arrested and detained them and planted evidence on them turned out to be true. Over eight years after I first reported on their case and after I ceased writing for a local newspaper I still followed up on their case, until the date that a court finally ruled in October 2010 that they were innocent (for details see Asian Human Rights Commission, Press Release No. AHRC-PRL-026-2010).
Prior to the court ruling, the regional office of the Commission for Human Rights (CHR) of the Philippines had also concluded that the rights of the victims had been violated and that they had been denied due process. However, it took the CHR four years to commence the investigation process. By the time the CHR had finally resolved the complaints of the victims, they had already lost interest in pursuing their complaints. By then, the victims were ready to forego the case rather than spending further years in prosecuting the police officers involved, including former city police director Supt. Jorge Aquisap and P/Supt. Baluyot, who had already been transferred and retired from the police service respectively.
The GenSan Three had endured unthinkable difficulties in their quest to have their names cleared. But even after they had been legally acquitted, their quest for exoneration has remained unfinished. In the community and the society where they live, they are still outcasts and have had to endure social isolation as ex-convicts. The Philippines is a country where former prisoners are persons who are feared and avoided. There is no concept of them being integrated back into society.
After the victims’ release from detention in October 2010, the AHRC interviewed one of their relatives, Abina Rombaoa. When asked about how the victims had endured their years in prison while under trial she said of Jejhon Macalinsal that, “Jejhon spat blood due to police torture and suffered trauma. He, however, never had the opportunity to be checked by a professional psychiatrist, for lack of money.” Jejhon said of his release, “I never thought that if the police and military want to have accomplishments for promotion it is so easy for them to do. They can arrest persons without evidence. It is easy to invent accomplishments for them. Just like that.”
On Arsul Ginta, Abina remarked that,
“His wife died due to depression because of what had happened to her husband [eight months before the three men were acquitted]. One of the reasons for his wife’s depression was the continued police impoundment of their five items of luggage which contain valuables. The luggage contained products they would have been selling as their source of livelihood; however, since they were used as evidence in court, they could not get them from the police. Before she died, she seemed to have already decided that the case of her husband would not finish even after her death.”
|
Torture victims acquitted after eight-year trial
(A press release by the Asian Human Rights Commission, AHRC-PRL-026-2010, 2 November 2010)
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is pleased to inform you that four men, three of whom were illegally arrested and detained, were acquitted by a local court from two charges of illegal possession of explosives. The court found that the case laid against them “exhibits a straightforward violation of due process”.
Three of the accused, Jejhon Macalinsal, Abubakar Amilhasan and Arsul Ginta, were illegally arrested during a police raid on April 24, 2002 in Barangay (village) Calumpang, General Santos City. They were charged with illegal possession of explosives using the evidence planted by the policemen who were led by Police Superintendent Bartolome Baluyot, former director of the Regional Police Office (PRO XII). The evidence was planted at the house where the accused were staying during the arrest.
In his 16 page decision read in open court on October 29, 2010, Judge Oscar Noel Jr., presiding judge of the Regional Trial Court (RTC), ruled that, “As gleaned from records of these cases the pieces of evidence presented by the prosecution fall short of the constitutional guarantee, the execution of search warrants suffers from several fatal flows, equally deadly”.
The violations that the policemen have committed were:
1. Use of wrong witnesses: When the police served the court order (search warrant) to search the houses where the accused where staying, the two village officials who stood as witnesses were legally unacceptable. Searches can only be valid when the place to be searched is within the jurisdiction of these village officials.
But the two officials, Sabina Castomayor and Jose Arrojo, who came with the policemen when they implemented the order, were officials of Barangay Labangal not Calumpang. Under the procedure in conducting searches, policemen are required to have village officials from the same village to be present as witnesses.
2. Scheming and planting of evidence: The issuance by another court of an order to conduct searches, which justified the policemen to conduct searches at the houses at 3am on April 24, 2002, were also a product of scheming by the policemen and a prelude to their planting of evidence on the accused all along.
Firstly, at 11am on April 23, 2002, a day before the policemen raided the house, two gunmen entered one of three houses wearing balaclavas. Once inside, one of them gave Jejhon Macalinsal, one of the four accused, a piece of paper with a telephone number written on it. He was forced to dial the telephone number and tell the person on the other end that: “There’s a bomb in the front and at the back of their office”. The gunmen later left after they made sure that Macalinsal had done it.
The telephone number was later found to belong to the office of Bayan Telecommunications (BayanTel), a local telecommunication company in the city. The company had a caller Identification System in their telephone system which enabled them to accurately determine the telephone number used in calling and the name of the subscriber that the telephone is registered to.
The policemen used the said record of the phone call and subscription to deliberately falsely charge the four accused. In his numerous media interviews, Supt. Baluyot declared them as responsible in bombing Fitmart Mall in General Santos City on April 21, 2002. But strangely, none of the accused was charged with murders in relation to the death of civilians in that bombing incident.
Secondly, the scheming justified the policemen’s application of search orders from Judge Antonio Lubao of RTC, Branch 22 in the same city, claiming that the occupants of the house were keeping M14 and M16 armalite riles. The court then issued orders for policemen to search the house owned by Aron Sala. Sala was not physically present during the raid but was included in the charges.
Sala was studying in Marawi City, more than ten hours travel from General Santos City where the raid took place.
3. Arbitrary inclusion of the accused in the cases: Aron Sala’s name was arbitrarily included for the simple reason that the telephone number used by Macalinsal to make a fake bomb threat upon the instruction of the armed men is registered in his name. The phone call and subscription were used by the policemen as evidence in justifying their application for the issuance of the court order to search Sala’s house.
When the police conducted the raid they also searched the two other houses that were not part of the court’s order. The policemen also prevented the three accused and the occupants from seeing what they were doing inside the house when they were conducting the searches.
The policemen who stood as witnesses for the prosecution did not deny or challenge the claim of the accused that they were not in possession of the evidence used on them–a mortar and a grenade. The court ruled that they were planted and taken inside the house by “three persons wearing black bonnets and combat shoes who entered the compound together with the raiding team who threw a sack full of something in the house of one of the accused’s mother-in-law.”
4. Policemen could not identify the accused in court: During the court hearing, the two policemen, Senior Police Officer 1 (SPO1) Rex Diongon and Police Inspector (PI) Harrison Martinez, who served the search orders, “did not point categorically where in particular they seized the pieces of evidence they presented in support of their cases”. Martinez could also not identify in open court which one was Amilhasan and which one was Macalinsal.
5. Police try to extort money in exchange for dropping cases: On May 12, 2002, while Arsul Ginta was in custody he was approached by three persons who introduced themselves as police officers. He was told that they were given instructions by Supt. Baluyot to negotiate the dropping of charges against him. He was told that the policemen could withdraw from prosecuting the complaint if he paid Php 150,000 (USD 3,500). But Ginta refused to do so.
Before Supt. Baluyot retired from the police service he had previous records of having involvement in illegally arresting, detaining, planting evidence and torturing persons arrested during police operations. He is also one of the policemen the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) found to have tortured and violated the rights of the Abadilla Five while they were in police custody.
Although the four accused have been acquitted from these charges, they are still being tried for charges of illegal possession of firearms before the Municipal Trial Court (MTC) Branch 3 in the same city. The evidence that the policemen and the prosecutors used in this case was also planted, and used in the case in which the accused have already been acquitted from. |
The Sasa Five: Exonerated after almost seven years on trial
In April 2003, I was collecting a colleague at Sasa Wharf in Davao City who was arriving from a provincial trip onboard a vessel. As we approached the gate of the port to exit, we heard a loud explosion nearby. The impact was so strong that it shook the ground we walked on. It happened just after the sunset. I saw a stream of visibly shocked and frightened people running away from where the explosion had occurred. But curious as I was (I forgot I was no longer a reporter at that time), I ran towards where the explosion was, leaving my colleague and her luggage.
After seeing a crowd of people who also wanted to get a clear view, I climbed half way up the steel fence that divided the compound from the outside, where the explosion was. As I was clinging on the steel fence, I could closely and clearly see dead bodies littered on the ground, and blood on the ground, on stalls and on vehicles where the impact of the blast had taken it. I could smell the blood and stench of explosives. It never occurred to my mind that had my colleague and I walked faster than we did, we would have been among those injured, if not killed, since the blast site was where passengers and by-passers go to enter and exit the seaport.
Although I was no longer a reporter, I relayed the details of what I experienced to a journalist friend, the late Alejendro “Bong” Reblando (one of the 58 people killed in the Maguindanao massacre) about what I had witnessed. He wrote a headline story for a national daily with me as his source of information.
![]()
Investigators comb the scene of the Sasa Wharf explosion on 3 April 2003, where over 15 people were killed and 50 injured (AFP PHOTO/Jay DIRECTO)
With my previous experience of covering stories of bomb blasts, it came as no surprise to me when the five suspects, Tohamie Ulong, Ting Idar, Jimmy Balulao, Esmael Mamalangkas and Tho Akmad, collectively known as the Sasa Five, whom the police and soldiers arrested on 8 April 2002 in Poblacion Dos, Cotabato City, claimed that they had been tortured while under custodial investigation following their arrest.
A few days after the five men were transferred from Cotabato City to Davao City, which is seven hours travel by passenger bus, I interviewed three of the five detainees. At that time, none of the local media or human rights organizations had spoken to them. Others were perhaps reluctant to get involved because all the five suspects had been portrayed in the media, based on the interviews they had reportedly had with the police and military, as “bomb experts of a rebel group”.
Strangely though, when I introduced myself to the duty police officer attached to the Criminal Investigation and Detention Group (CIDG) at their headquarters in San Pedro Street, Davao City and told him of my purpose in interviewing the five victims who were inside their detention cell, I did not drew any suspicion from him. He voluntarily led me to the prison cell where the five were held, and as much as I could, I interviewed three of the five detainees. I did not know that I was one of the first persons whom the detainees had spoken to and been in contact with apart from the police. Some of their relatives had not even seen them since they were arrested.
As I usually do before doing interviews, I introduced myself to the three victims and explained to them the purpose of the interview. They were inside their detention cell while I sat just in front of them, writing the details. I cannot forget how each of them urged me to record as much information as they could possibly give me, information that I would relay to their relatives and details about how they were tortured to forced them into admitting that they were responsible for the bomb blast.
After I finished interviewing them, I went back to my office and quickly put all the details that they had told me into documentation. When I went back to the CIDG headquarters, I was carrying with me statements of the three torture victims that I put into writing for them to sign. However, as the victims were signing their statements after I had explained the details to them, the duty officer, Senior Police Officer 2 (SPO2) Gabunada of the CIDG started confiscating the signed and unsigned statements. He did it in open view of one of the legal counsel of the victims and some of the relatives as they were just visiting them at the CIDG detention facilities. I demanded from SPO2 Gabunada to return the copies to me but he just ignored me.
We filed administrative charges against SPO2 Gabunada before the police Regional Internal Affairs Service; however, the punishment that the service imposed on him after a long hearing was merely a verbal reprimand. The statements were never returned. Below are excerpts of the unsigned statements of Jimmy Balulao, Ting Idar and Esmael Mamalangkas when I interviewed them. These are the testimonies that SPO2 Gabunada had suppressed from coming out. They were never included as part of the record of the case.
Testimony of Esmael Mamalangkas:
“At 6am on 8 April 2003, I was inside our shanty residence together with my wife and five children. I was drinking coffee while my wife Norma was cooking our food when several armed men wearing balaclavas suddenly entered, handcuffed me and placed a blindfold over my eyes. Those men forced me to a waiting vehicle were my co-accused were already held. They brought us to the Sixth Infantry Division at Awang, Datu odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao where we were held in a room. They punched and kicked me in the different parts of my body while I was blindfolded with a cloth and a masking tape. I was forced and tortured by my abductors to admit participation in the said incidents. As I did not have anything to do with it they repeatedly assaulted me. In spite of my complaint of body pains I was not allowed to be examined by an independent doctor, not until my head and body contusions were gone.”
Testimony of Jimmy Balulao:
“I was handcuffed and dragged into a waiting L-300 van. I resisted but was assaulted so I was forced to go with the persons arresting me. Inside the L-300 van I was blindfolded with a cloth and masking tape. I was interrogated and tortured inside the Sixth Infantry Division camp and forced to admit to participation in the Davao International Airport bombing and Sasa Wharf bombing. I was repeatedly assaulted to the extent that they placed my belt on my neck and pulled it upward to strangle me until I could already hardly breathe. Then, I was dragged near to a dog pen and I was threatened to be fed to the dogs every time I denied any involvement in those bombings. While I was interrogated, one of the abductors kept on hitting my elbow with a hard object, to the extent that it got numbed. I was made to lie on the cement floor while three bullets were place between three of my fingers on my left hand and then it was pressed which was very painful. Then they placed an object on my lap which according to them was a bomb. They did this twice. They repeatedly punched my head and other parts of my body. Then they brought Tohami near me who persuaded me to admit to participation in the Davao Airport and Sasa Wharf bombings so that our abductors would stop torturing us, but I still refused. One of my abductors told me to admit to the bombing otherwise more harm would be inflicted on us once we were brought to Davao City. On 9 April 2003 we were put on a helicopter and brought to the CIDG in Davao City. Because of fear that I would eventually be killed if I continued denying involvement I was forced to admit to participation in those bombings while undergoing investigation at the CIDG. In my forced admission I implicated Tho and Tohami as my companions. On 11 April 2003 we were brought to the prosecutor’s office with strict instructions from the CIDG to admit to the bombings or else we would be tortured again. As a matter of fact one of the officers of the CIDG was present while the prosecutor was asking me questions. I was complaining of my body pains but I was not allowed to be examined by an independent physician in the presence of my lawyer and relatives. I was never informed of my rights under the law, while being investigated and interrogated. I was not allowed to communicate with my relatives nor talk to a lawyer of my own choice. I do not even know Atty. Melodias who assisted me in my extra-judicial confession.”
Testimony of Ting Idar:
“I showed my wallet with 3000 Pesos, the proceeds of fish I delivered from Payan to Cotabato City for my father, and they suddenly dragged me to a waiting L-300 van. I resisted but they punched and kicked me so I was forced to go with them. Inside the L-300 van, they blindfolded me with a face towel and masking tape, and then we were brought to Sixth Infantry Division headquarters in Awang, Datu odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao. I was placed in a room where I was tortured. One of my abductors placed an object on my lap to frighten me, which according to him was a bomb, but it did not explode when it fell to the floor. Our abductors forced me to admit to participation in the Davao International Airport and Sasa Wharf bombing incidents. They repeatedly assaulted me and placed a rope around my neck which they pulled up every now and then, until I could not breathe anymore. In spite of the torture, I insisted that I had nothing to do with their accusations because I had never been to Davao City. They again placed an object on my lap which according to them was a bomb and they let me sit on the bowl inside a comfort room then they brought me out of the comfort room and they threatened to electrocute me if I would not admit to participation in the said bombings. They electrocuted my left foot, which caused me intense pain and I almost lost consciousness. When I was almost unconscious they poured water on me. In the morning of 9 April 2003, they loaded me into a helicopter with my co-accused. Upon reaching the CIDG in Davao City, they compelled me to put a thumb mark on some documents the contents of which I did not know and one of the officers assigned there even pointed his handgun between my eyes. I was not informed of any of my rights under the law while being interrogated and investigated. On 11 April 2003, we were brought to the prosecutor’s office with instructions to admit the bombings or else we would suffer the consequences upon our return to CIDG. In spite of my complaints of body pains, I was not examined by any independent physician and in the presence of my lawyer and relatives.”
On 29 January 2010, after over seven years of detention for charges of multiple murder and frustrated murder in connection with the Sasa Wharf bomb blast, Judge Pelagio Paguican of the Regional Trial Court Branch 12 in Davao City acquitted all of the victims and ordered their release. Judge Paguican ruled that “the prosecution was unable to provide sufficient evidence that would prove the guilt of all the accused beyond reasonable doubt”. I deeply respect the victims’ lawyer, Hamlet Pahm, who defended them in their case all those years.
Judge Paguican, however, convicted one of the victims, Tho Akmad, for his alleged “direct participation” in a separate bomb blast on 4 March 2003 which took place at the waiting shed of Davao International Airport. In my interview with Balulao in 2003, he said that he had implicated Akmad in that bombing while he was being tortured in police custody. Balulao’s statement never became part of the record of the case.
The Abadilla Five: Convicted on evidence taken by way of torture
Unlike in the two cases mentioned above, torture victims Lenido Lumanog, Augusto Santos, Senior Police Officer 2 (SPO2) Cesar Fortuna, Rameses de Jesus and Joel de Jesus, who are collectively known as the Abadilla Five, were sentenced to life imprisonment after a trial of over 14 years for the murder of Col. Rolando Abadilla in June 1996.
![]()
The AHRC has set up a campaign website with extensive documentation on this case (go to www.humanrights.asia and click on campaigns to reach the page), and here I would only like to mention some salient facts concerning the final verdict of the Supreme Court on 8 February 2011. (See also “Case analysis: Supreme Court’s findings on Vizconde and Abadilla cases are contradictory” in this special report.) (photo: An artist’s interpretation of the police torture of Cesar Fortuna (inset) (Illustration by Albert Rodriguez, Philippine Daily Inquirer))
On 11 January 2011, after over 14 years, the Office of the Ombudsman for the Military and Other Law Enforcement Offices (MOLEO) concluded that the policemen involved in investigating the case have a case to answer, as established by the findings of the CHR in its Investigation Report of 27 July 1996. The CHR had resolved that “based on the circumstances and evidence gathered, there was sufficient basis to warrant a prima facie case of human rights violations”. Accordingly, the MOLEO recommended the filing of criminal charges against the policemen for variety of violations of the articles of the Revised Penal Code.
The alleged perpetrators in this case cannot be prosecuted for torture because at the time of their alleged offences there was no law; and since the Anti-Torture Act was enacted in November 2009, under the principle of the non-retroactivity, meaning that a person cannot be prosecuted for a crime that did not exist in law at the time the offence was committed. The protection against retroactive prosecution is a right in the 1987 Constitution. Furthermore, two of the respondents have already passed away; and another, P/Supt. Baluyot (later Snr. Supt.), has been permitted to retire from the police service.
Not mentioned in the CHR’s report was the manner how the police arrested, subjected to torture and denied legal counsel to one of the victims, Joel de Jesus. It was Joel who implicated the other victims, whom the police arrested subsequently, due to severe torture. As for how Joel came to be accused, before the key witness, Freddie Alejo, identified him as one of the perpetrators in the police line-up, the policemen had already shown him Joel’s photograph and said that he was one of the suspects.
Also, the lawyer that the police provided to Joel was not of his own choice. The lawyer was appointed by the policemen for him. This violation of Joel’s right to due process was the subject of a dissenting opinion by one of the Supreme Court justices, Antonio Carpio, following the promulgation of the court’s decision on a petition for certiorari on 7 September 2010 (G.R. Nos. 182555/G.R. No. 185123/G.R. No. 187745. September 7, 2010).
![]()
In his dissent, Justice Carpio argued that,
“The police showed only one photograph, that of Joel’s, highlighting the fact that the police primed and conditioned Alejo to identify Joel as one of the murderers of Abadilla. The police focused on Joel as one of the suspects, prior to Alejo’s identification. The police did not show Alejo any other photograph, only that of Joel’s. Assuming Alejo refused to glance at Joel’s photograph, which is quite unbelievable, the fact that he was shown only one photograph violates standard operating procedures in criminal investigations.” (photo on right: Cesar Fortuna shows scarson his wrists obtained during torture (Philippine Daily Inquirer/CHR))
However, in affirming the conviction, the SC held that “we find nothing irregular in the identification made by Alejo at the police station” and that “assuming arguendo that Alejo’s out-of-court identification was tainted with irregularity, his subsequent identification in court cured any flaw that may have attended it. We have held that the inadmissibility of a police line-up identification should not necessarily foreclose the admissibility of an independent in-court identification”.
The torture victims again appealed the 7 September 2010 decision of the Supreme Court; however, in concluding with finality their appeal on 8 February 2011 (G.R. Nos. 182555/185123/187745) the court upheld once again its earlier ruling affirming the guilty verdict solely on the basis of Alejo’s positive identification. In concluding the appeal process, two of the justices, Antonio Carpio and Roberto Abad, iterated their dissent.
The court did not take judicial notice of the MOLEO’s recommendation for the filing of criminal charges against the policemen who had illegally arrested, detained and allegedly tortured the five victims. The court argued that, in the process of review, they could not act on the MOLEO findings because they were not officially offered as part of the case for consideration.
