Factoran says he won’t evade prosecution on homicide raps

The law student son of former Environment Secretary Fulgencio Factoran said he has no intention of leaving the country to evade prosecution of charges that he and his fraternity brothers killed University of the Philippines student Den Daniel Reyes last Feb. 10.

"I have nothing to hide. If I had any intention to flee I would have done so a long time ago," Fulgencio "Bibit" III, a senior law student told The STAR during a break from his duties as an intern at the UP College of Law Office of Legal Aid.

Factoran, along with fellow Sigma Rhoans Gil Taway IV and Marcelino Rongo, are the principal suspects in the murder of Reyes, a member of the Alpha Phi Beta, inside the UP campus in Diliman, Quezon City.

The three are now facing homicide charges in the sala of Judge Estrella Estrada of Branch 83 of the Quezon City regional trial court.

Factoran expressed incredulity at a motion filed by APB lawyers to bar him, Taway and Rongo from leaving the country. "We are innocent. We were the ones who were attacked in the first place," he said.

The Reyes family earlier asked the Quezon City prosecutor’s office to reconsider its resolution downgrading to mere homicide the original murder charges against the accused.

In their nine-page motion, the victim’s family said the prosecutors arrived at a "deficient and fatally-flawed conclusion" that the suspects can only be charged with homicide. Their lawyer, Arnold Guerrero, said the testimonies of the prosecution’s witnesses were inconsistent.

"There was no showing in the resolution indicating and pointing out any portion in the statement of the complainants’ witnesses of any inconsistencies as in fact, there was no inconsistency," the lawyer wrote.

Two APB men - Keven Camagay and Vincent Jimenez - have identified the three suspects as among the five men who attacked Reyes at around 8 pm with long knives in front of the UP Law Center.

The suspects denied the charges, however. According to them, they were the ones attacked by men with hoods while they were walking towards the College of Law, which is beside the Law Center.

Government prosecutors have raised doubts about the credibility of APB’s witnesses. "The most serious question that has been raised was the fact that when witness Jimenez was asked by the guard on duty at the East Avenue Medical Center as to the identify of the assailants, he replied that they were unidentified."