SC orders QC court to hear habeas corpus petition of Batasan suspects

The Supreme Court yesterday directed the executive judge of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court to hear the petition for habeas corpus filed by three arrested suspects in the bombing that killed Basilan Rep. Wahab Akbar and four others at the House of Representatives in Quezon City last Nov. 13.

In a two-page resolution, the SC also required the respondents in the case, the police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), represented by Sr. Supt. Asher Dolina, and the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame, represented by Chief Inspector Joel Manuel Ana, to make a return of the writ of habeas corpus before the executive judge of the Quezon City RTC on Dec. 18 at 8:30 a.m.

In their Dec. 10 petition for the issuance of the writ of habeas corpus, Ikram Indama, Caidar Aunal and Adham Kusain, through their respective families, questioned their continued detention in Camp Crame. They alleged that they were being illegally detained and held incommunicado.

Aunal and Kusain are detained at the PNP Custodial Center while Indama is being held at the NCR-CIDG jail.

The three accused also told the SC through their petition that they were arrested last Nov. 15 for obstruction of justice but were later charged with multiple murder and frustrated murder for the bombing at the Batasan Pambansa’s South Wing lobby.

Last Dec. 10, Aunal and Kusain, along with another suspect in the Batasan bombing, former mayor Hajarun Jamiri of Tuburan, Basilan, recanted their previous statements during the conduct of preliminary investigation at the Department of Justice.

Jamiri denied having implicated Anak Mindanao party-list Rep. Mujiv Hataman and his brother Jim in the Nov. 13 blast.

He said that he was tortured by his police interrogators into implicating the Hataman brothers as the brains behind the blast. Jamiri said he was tortured and forced to sign his Nov. 20 affidavit and his Nov. 23 supplemental affidavit.

Aunal and Kusain also recanted their earlier statements, saying that they were threatened by their CIDG custodians while in detention at Camp Crame.

The duo said that their earlier statements, taken under duress, were also taken in the presence of a lawyer not of their choice.

Last Nov. 29, the CIDG included Mujiv Hataman and former Basilan Rep. Gerry Salappudin among the respondents in the Batasan bombing.

Also included by the CIDG in the list of respondents were Jim Hataman and Police Officer 1 Bayan Judda, who allegedly bought the explosives in Zamboanga City.

Charges of multiple murder and frustrated murder were filed against Aunal, Indama and Kusain last Nov. 19 before the Department of Justice by the CIDG.

The DOJ later filed charges of multiple murder and obstruction of justice against the three before the Quezon City Regional Trial Court.

Meanwhile, the local Muslim community welcomed the findings of police investigators that the explosion at the Glorietta 2 mall in Makati City that killed 11 people last Oct. 19 was caused by a gas explosion and was not a terrorist plot.

Lawyer Nasser Marohomsalic, convenor of the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy (PCID), said the accident report will save local Muslim communities from a police crackdown.

He said the Muslims were relieved after the police report that blamed the Glorietta blast on a gas explosion, since this means the police will no longer conduct manhunt operations for suspected Abu Sayyaf bandits in Muslim neighborhoods in Metro Manila.

Marohomsalic, a former commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), said the arrest of innocent Muslims had happened in the past, but the suspects were later released for lack of evidence.

He said the disclosure of the suspects in the Batasan bombing is similar to past cases wherein suspects recanted their supposed confessions and accused police investigators of torturing them and forcing them to sign the statements.