(CMFR/IFEX) – A local judge has ordered the arrest of a policeman suspected of killing a journalist eight months ago in Pagadian city, southern Philippines, after the Department of Justice (DOJ) dismissed the suspect’s petition for review of the criminal case proceedings against him. In an order signed on 30 January 2003, Executive Judge Franklyn […]
(CMFR/IFEX) – A local judge has ordered the arrest of a policeman suspected of killing a journalist eight months ago in Pagadian city, southern Philippines, after the Department of Justice (DOJ) dismissed the suspect’s petition for review of the criminal case proceedings against him.
In an order signed on 30 January 2003, Executive Judge Franklyn Villegas directed the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Pagadian City to arrest PO1 Guillermo Wapille, the primary suspect in the killing of journalist Edgar Damalerio on 13 May 2002. The order specified that since Wapile is charged with murder, a capital offense, “no bail is fixed by the court for the provisional liberty of the accused.”
Gemma Damalerio, the journalist’s widow, and Fe Damalerio-Balaba, his sister, described the order as “good news” in an interview with CMFR.
The issuance of the arrest warrant came after the DOJ, in a 16 January resolution, dismissed the petition for review filed by Wapile through his counsel.
In the DOJ resolution, Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño said that the DOJ “carefully examined the petition…and on the basis of the evidence on record, found no error that would justify a reversal of the appealed resolution,” prompting the DOJ to dismiss the petition for review filed by Wapile.
Wapile’s counsel filed the petition for review before the DOJ, as well as an urgent motion to defer and/or recall the arrest warrant against his client on 20 November.
In his petition, Wapile questioned the existence of probable cause as stated in the joint resolution filed by a panel of Zamboanga City prosecutors against him. Wapile said “the purpose of preliminary investigation is to establish probable cause and to secure the innocent against hasty, malicious, and oppressive prosecution,” which, he said, “has been capriciously and wantonly disregarded” by the panel.
In a joint resolution filed on 24 October, the panel of prosecutors the DOJ had ordered to look into the case found probable cause against Wapile for Damalerio’s murder. The panel also dismissed the nuisance cases filed against witnesses Edgar Amoro and Edgar Ongue.
Edgar Lavella, a lawyer consulted by Damalerio’s family, said the motion filed by the defence counsel effectively resulted in the deferment of the issuance of the arrest warrant and arraignment proceedings against Wapile, as well as the suspension of the case proceedings.
Following the Justice Department’s decision, he said, there would be “no impediment for the implementation of the issuance of warrant of arrest against Wapile.” “The judge will have to take the necessary course of action to solve the case of Damalerio,” he added.
A radio commentator and the managing editor of the “Zamboanga Scribe”, Damalerio was shot dead on 13 May in Pagadian City, Zamboanga del Sur, 780 kilometres south of Manila. He was killed near the city’s police headquarters and city hall.
Despite the positive identification of Wapile as the killer by witnesses Amoro and Ongue, who were with Damalerio at the time of the killing, Pagadian City Police Chief Superintendent Asuri Hawani instead filed murder charges against another person. Hawani did not investigate his then subordinate Wapile, much less file charges against him. Although ordered dismissed from the police, Hawani and Wapile have been temporarily reassigned to the Philippine National Police’s Camp Abelon, in Pagadian City.
When CMFR interviewed him on 29 January, Judge Villegas of Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 19 said that the court had not yet received a copy of the DOJ decision from the city prosecutor’s office. However, according to Villegas, who temporarily handled the case after presiding officer Rolando Goan went on leave, as of 1 February, the court will reissue the warrant regardless of any DOJ decision, or whether or not his office receives an official copy of the decision.
“I did not get an official communication from the DOJ (about the decision), but that is immaterial (to the issuance of an arrest warrant on 1 February),” Villegas said.Nonetheless, Villegas stressed that “as soon as we get a copy of the DOJ decision, we could immediately re-issue the warrant of arrest.” He added, “We don’t have to wait for 1 February (if there is already an official copy of the decision). We just have to officially verify it.”CMFR contacted the Pagadian City Prosecutor’s Office and was told that it had received the official copy of the decision from the DOJ on 29 January.
According to Assistant City Prosecutor Alandrix Betoya’s secretary, Perlita Cariño, the Prosecutor’s Office has filed a motion to resume the proceedings and to issue an arrest warrant against Wapile. The motion was filed on 30 January, said Cariño. That same day, Villegas reissued the arrest warrant against Wapile.When asked by CMFR to comment on the DOJ decision dismissing Wapile’s petition, Flavio Cordero, Jr., Wapile’s counsel, said that as of 29 January, he had not yet received a copy. If the decision indeed denied his client’s petition for review, Cordero vowed to “exhaust all legal and equitable remedies” to help Wapile. He added the he could file a motion for reconsideration before the DOJ, or file a motion of appeal before the Court of Appeals and/or President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Because of the Pagadian City Prosecutor’s Office’s motion to lift the suspension of proceedings and the deferment of the arraignment and arrest warrant, the hearings will resume on 7 February in Judge Villegas’ court, RTC Branch 19, since the presiding officer of the case, Judge Goan, is still on leave, said Gemma Damalerio.
Meanwhile, Wapile’s former superior, Hawani, filed a motion on 22 January to dismiss the administrative complaint against him, stating that his case is not within the immediate jurisdiction of the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM), where Gemma Damalerio and Fe Damalerio-Balaba filed the complaint.
In his motion, Hawani argued that the “Internal Affairs Service of the PNP has jurisdiction over the subject case” and not the DIDM.
However, according to Damalerio-Balaba, she and her sister-in-law filed the administrative complaint before the DIDM because they were referred to the said office by the group Violence Against Crime and Corruption (VACC), which initially helped them in the case. “Why did the DIDM entertain us if they knew we could not ask them for help in the case?” she asked, adding that Hawani and Wapile already knew that DIDM was investigating the case even at the start, since they were summoned a few times in the DIDM’s initial investigation. “Why are they only now questioning the handling of DIDM of the case?” she asked.
The motion to dismiss the case by Hawani came 14 days after the PNP ordered the dismissal from service of both Hawani and Wapile after the police found Hawani guilty of obstruction of justice and probable cause against Wapile in Damalerio’s murder.
Denying reports that the dismissal orders were signed on 3 January, SPO4 Jose Herreria said that the orders were signed on 8 January. Herreria is chief clerk of DIDM’s pre-charge division.
A day before Ebdane supposedly signed the dismissal orders, media organizations held a dialogue with top PNP officials in Manila.
Together with the Damalerios and relatives and friends of other journalists killed in the line of duty, representatives from the media, government and civil society discussed the worrying number of journalists killed in the line of duty.
Background Information
Contrary to what has earlier been reported, Damalerio is not the 36th journalist to be killed in the line of duty since 1986 or the 51st since 1961. The CMFR database indicates that Damalerio is, in fact, the 35th journalist killed in the line of duty in the Philippines since 1986 and 50th since 1961.
“The Damalerio case represents an opportunity to break the cycle of impunity and catch the killer,” said Sheila Coronel, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), during the 7 January media dialogue. “It is a rare opportunity for us to get the killer of a journalist,” she added.
Since 1961, only two cases have been verified to have been solved, resulting in the imprisonment of the killers of journalists in the Philippines. Not one case has been solved since 1986. The CMFR database shows that an average of three journalists have been killed since then per year, despite the decrease in the number of slain journalists worldwide.
The increasing number of journalists killed in the country because of their work and the constant number of journalists killed per year prompted Lin Neumann, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists’ Asia representative, to declare that the Philippines “has become the most dangerous place for journalists,” worse than other press hot spots such as Colombia, Algeria, Pakistan and Russia.
“Nowhere else in the world have more journalists been killed in the last 15 years than in the Philippines,” Neumann said during the 7 January discussions between media groups and the police in Manila.
