The Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Cebu City Chapter has described as unfair Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s criticism insinuating that the lawyers’ group has been protecting the rights of the criminals instead of the innocent victims.
Lawyer Briccio Boholst, chapter president, said that most of the members of the IBP were disappointed with Osmeña, and some wanted to have a resolution condemning the mayor’s statement and demanding for an explanation.
Boholst said cooler heads however prevailed during the meeting and prevented what could have been a confrontational stance against the mayor.
Boholst said it is is not true that the IBP will only react when criminals are summarily executed but not when innocent victims are killed. “Na misinformed lang si Mayor Osmeña,” he told radio dyLA.
Last March 6, the IBP passed a resolution condemning the robbery and killing of nursing student Ruby Jade Ruba. That was after the killing, Boholst said, adding that the resolution also expressed sympathy to the victim’s family, and asked the police for the immediate solution of the case.
The mayor criticized the IBP for allegedly being silent on the killing of Ruba, while condemning the vigilante killings of noted criminals during the past years.
The police had deemed solved the Ruba rob-slay case after two Crips gang members admitted to the crime recently. Charges for robbery with homicide have already been filed in court against the two suspects, Aivan Romawac Barabat and Mark Anthony Labitad Gabriel.
Barabat and Gabriel executed before Aquilino Felicitas their extra-judicial confessions to the robbery and shooting to death of Ruba.
The case against the third suspect, Karl Marx Carticiano, is still pending at the Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office after he availed himself of the preliminary
investigation. —Fred P. Languido/RAE