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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Trillanes amnesty under Palace review

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CHIEF Presidential Legal Counsel Secretary Salvador Panelo on Wednesday said he will review the amnesty granted to Senator Antonio Trillanes IV over his involvement in the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny and the 2007 Manila Peninsula seige.

“There are some legal quarters expressing uncertainty or doubt on that. I’ll go over the case. Then, I’ll give you my proper response,” Panelo told reporters in Malacañang.

“Anything that is not the law can be a precedent. It is always in the context of the law. So if the amnesty was wrong, then it is invalid,” Panelo said, stressing however that he had to review the facts of the case.

Panelo said there could also be violations of the conditions contained in the amnesty that former President Benigno Aquino III granted to Trillanes in 2010.

Trillanes, who was then only a Navy lieutenant senior grade, rose to national prominence when he led the Oakwood Mutiny in July 2003 and the Manila Peninsula siege in November 2007.

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He was incarcerated but won a seat in the Senate in 2007 despite being detained for complicity in a failed coup d’état. He was in jail for over seven years until Aquino’s amnesty.

In May 2016, the Court of Appeals found Senator Antonio Trillanes guilty of indirect contempt and fined him P30,000 for claiming that two members of the bench received bribes in exchange for a temporary restraining order in favor of dismissed Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay Jr.

The contempt charge is under appeal in the Supreme Court but CA Associate Justices Jose Reyes Jr. and Francisco Acosta filed an ethics complain against Trillanes for the bribery accusation. 

Another ethics complaint was filed against opposition Trillanes IV on Tuesday, according to Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III.

Sotto said the new complains was filed by lawyer Abelardo de Jesus, who also filed the first ethics complaint against Senator Leila de Lima.

Sotto said the complaint is based on two reasons—the Court of Appeals’ indirect contempt of Trillanes following his bribery allegations against two CA associate justices, and the senator’s public declaration that President Rodrigo Duterte is a “murderer.”

Sotto said he has yet to read the entire complaint and will not distribute copies among the committee members, due to the recent Senate reorganization. 

Trillanes was unaware that a complaint was lodged against him but he said he remains unfazed despite threats to pin him down, and vowed to continue criticizing the Duterte administration.

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