Bureau of Corrections Director Gerald Bantag has been acquitted of the charge of homicide in connection with a blast that killed 10 detainees three years ago.
The decision was handed down on Jan. 8 by Branch 274 of the Parañaque Regional Trial Court, which dismissed the homicide case against Bantag and two other jail officers due to “insufficiency of evidence.”
Those killed include two Chinese who were meeting with Bantag, then warden of the Paranaque City jail, when the explosion occurred in his office on Aug. 11, 2016.
According to a police report, the inmates sought the meeting as a prelude to kidnap Bantag and break out of jail. But this was denied by the wife of a slain inmate, who claimed that the blast was staged to summarily execute inmates.
The court said that Bantag, who was wounded in the blast, had faced “an actual attack…when the inmates or one of the inmates fired at him and about to throw him an unknown object later confirmed to be a fragmentation grenade.”
It added that the prosecution “presented no other evidence except the bare allegations of the private complainants.”
In September last year, President Rodrigo Duterte appointed Bantag to head BuCor, replacing Nicanor Faeldon, whom the President fired earlier that month due to alleged questionable release of several heinous crime convicts.
