CIDG to pick up Reyes brothers
A team from the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) has been sent to Thailand to pick up former Palawan governor Joel Reyes and former Coron mayor Mario Reyes, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said yesterday.
She also confirmed that the brothers, after the completion of deportation proceedings, would arrive today, at the earliest.
“The CIDG team will subsequently escort them back to the Philippines. The team can be considered as the arresting team and, therefore, they have to make a return of the service of the warrant of arrest to the Palawan court,” she explained to reporters in an interview.
De Lima said the siblings, who are wanted for the killing of environmentalist and radio broadcaster Gerry Ortega in 2011, would either be brought to the PNP custodial center in Camp Crame or be brought directly to the Puerto Princesa regional trial court.
She has virtually rejected the request of the Ortega family for her to resolve the pending petition for review, which questioned the dismissal of the murder charges against the brothers.
“While I would like to grant their plea, it will be hard for us because it would jeopardize our pending petition in the Supreme Court against the Court of Appeals (CA) ruling,” she said.
De Lima explained that the justice department stood by the validity of its creation of a second panel of prosecutors that indicted the Reyes brothers for murder and resolving the review petition may only be considered by the court as a retraction of the murder charge.
In March 2013, the CA granted the petition of the former governor and reinstated the first DOJ resolution clearing the two brothers of the murder charges for insufficiency of evidence.
The appellate court ruled that instead of creating a second panel of investigators, De Lima should have reviewed the case herself. Another CA division also cleared the former mayor of murder.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand Topacio has questioned the arrest and deportation of the Reyes brothers, saying the CA ruling, which has not been reversed by the SC, made the warrant of arrest “void from the beginning.”
“They should be set free at once if there is any semblance of impartial justice in this country… We insist in the innocence of the Reyes brothers and we stand ready to defend them vigorously in any fair and square hearing untainted by political pressure and undue influence,” he said in a statement.
Topacio also slammed several officials he tagged as “epals” for taking advantage of the arrest of the Reyeses for their own publicity.
“It is regrettable that since it is political season, many are jumping in to make ‘epal’ on the repatriation of our clients,” he said, specifically mentioning Senate President Franklin Drilon and De Lima, who is reportedly running for senator.
“What should not be lost in the din of the ‘epalism’ is the fact that in two separate cases involving two different divisions, the Court of Appeals has struck down the basis for the arrest of the Reyes brothers,” he claimed.