Court won’t consolidate rebellion raps vs Pitao

The Quezon City Regional Trial Court ruled yesterday that it has no authority to consolidate into a single rebellion charge all the 17 criminal charges leveled against New People’s Army (NPA) leader Leoncio Pitao.

As this developed, the human rights group Karapatan urged the government of newly installed President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to free Pitao and the other political prisoners from detention as a gesture of goodwill and reconciliation for the resumption of peace talks with the communist National Democratic Front (NDF).

"The prosecution, under the rules, determines the charges against the accused and files the appropriate information in court and the ensuing criminal action is to be prosecuted under its direct control," Mendoza said in a one-page ruling. "A judge merely presides over the criminal action instituted with the filing of an information."

The judge issued the order on a motion for clarificatory ruling made by the Public Interest Law Center (PILC) on behalf of the captured NPA leader, who is also known as Commander Parago.

Pitao was supposed to be arraigned last Nov. 15 on the cases, involving charges of murder, double murder, multiple murder with multiple frustrated murder, car theft, kidnapping and serious illegal detention, robbery in band, arson and subversion. He is also accused of masterminding the abduction of Army Brig. Gen. Victor Obillo and Capt. Eduard Montealto in 1998.

His lawyers moved for a deferment of the arraignment, saying the judge should first rule on an omnibus motion they had earlier filed asking that the charges be transformed into one case of rebellion.

They said that while the court has already approved the administrative consolidation of the cases, it has not categorically ruled on the motion that all the charges of common crimes be turned into a single case of rebellion, citing the Hernandez doctrine.

In earlier cases brought against rightist military rebels who launched a series of failed attempts to overthrow the Aquino administration, the Supreme Court, upholding the doctrine, held that common crimes like murder cannot be "complexed" with rebellion.

According to the PILC lawyers, all the crimes brought against their client had been committed in the furtherance of rebellion; hence, the charge against him should be rebellion.

The prosecutors opposed the motion, saying that "not all the parties involved in the cases were members of the military or other military groups."– Romel Bagares