Rizal Alih asks court to dismiss charges

MANILA, Philippines - A lawyer representing renegade former policeman Rizal Alih is asking a Quezon City court to dismiss the serious illegal detention charges against him in connection with the 1989 siege at Camp Cawa-Cawa in Zamboanga.

Fernando Pena said Alih, 67, was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to murder charges in 2006. The defense asked the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 101 in 2009 to dismiss the murder charges on grounds of insufficient evidence. The following year, the court junked the murder charges and changed the case to serious illegal detention.

According to Pena, the court said that “if murder was the offense defined as alleged in the informations, the accused would have been acquitted for lack of direct evidence to conclude beyond reasonable doubt that he murdered the victims.”

Pena said even if the prosecution sought to amend the charges, the recourse should be the dismissal of the murder cases and the conduct of a preliminary investigation of the serious illegal detention case at the fiscal’s level.

Pena said this was a substantial amendment that requires a reinvestigation at the prosecutor’s level.

“The record will categorically show that the court never acquired jurisdiction over the charge of ‘serious illegal detention’ against the accused. As such, the proceedings may be declared as null and void or a complete nullity,” Pena said.

The murder charges were for the deaths of Brig. Gen. Eduardo Batalla and Col. Romeo Abendan during the 1989 siege. Batalla’s cause of death was heart attack and severe burns, while Abendan died of severe burns, contrary to reports they were beheaded, Pena said.

Following the siege, Alih escaped and hid in Malaysia until his arrest and deportation to the Philippines in 2006. Citing security reasons, the Supreme Court transferred the trial from Zamboanga to Quezon City.

The former policeman has since been detained at the Camp Crame custodial center in Quezon City.

Both murder and serious illegal detention are non-bailable offenses and carry the same penalty of a maximum of 40 years under the Revised Penal Code.