Duterte revokes Trillanes’ amnesty
MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte has declared the amnesty granted to Sen. Antonio
Trillanes IV in January 2011 as
void.
In his Proclamation 572, Duterte claimed that the senator “did not comply with the minimum requirements to qualify under the Amnesty Proclamation.”
The president has ordered the Department of Justice and court martial of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to pursue all criminal and administrative cases filed against Trillanes in connection with the Oakwood Mutiny in 2003 and the Manila Peninsula siege in 2007.
According to the proclamation, Trillanes did not apply for amnesty and “never expressed his guilt for the crimes that were committed” during those mutinies.
A January 6, 2011 report by The STAR notes, however, “Trillanes and 18 other Magdalo officers submitted their application forms to the Department of National Defense Ad Hoc Amnesty Committee at about 2 p.m. in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City.”
“It’s (coup) a technical charge that has elements that needs to be proven… Let me be clear, we admit guilt as far as rising up against the most corrupt president this country ever had,” the former Navy officer told reporters then.
He said in the same report, as in other reports on his amnesty application in 2011 that “[w]e are man enough to admit that we have broken rules in the pursuit of a moral cause and we faced it like men.”
Trillanes, who was elected senator while in detention, also said: “We were imprisoned and the others were separated from the service so it’s very easy for us to agree to that (admission of guilt).”
According to an ABSCBN News report on the application for amnesty, “Trillanes signed a portion acknowledging his involvement in uprisings that entail ‘a violation of the 1987 Constitution, criminal laws, and the Articles of War’ and recanting his statements in the past that are contrary ‘to this express admission of involvement/participation and guilt.’”