The Department of Justice on Wednesday said that 19 of the original Bureau of Corrections list of 1,914 persons deprived of liberty who had been prematurely released on account of good conduct time allowance have yet to be rearrested three months after President Rodrigo Duterte’s ultimatum for them to surrender to the authorities lapsed.
Justice Assistant Secretary Neal Vincent Bainto said the Philippine National Police of the Department of the Interior and Local Government have not yet provided the DOJ with updates on the status of their search for the remaining 19 PDLs.
“We have not received any feedback from the PNP or DILG. But we’ll call them up and see if they have arrested any from that 19 names that we sent to them,” Bainto said, in an interview.
President Duterte had ordered some 1,914 PDLs, who were prematurely released based on the computation of their good conduct time allowance, to surrender to allow authorities to review and re-compute their GCTA.
However, the list containing 1,914 names of PDLs, who were convicted of heinous crimes and were released from year 2014, was hurriedly done by the BuCor.
Justice Undersecretary Markk Perete recalled that when the BuCor came out with the 1,914 list at that time, they did not have the luxury of time.
“We have to go back to the context under which all of this happened. An investigation was conducted by the Senate and the Senate committee required the BuCor to come up with a list, so that list was prepared and as submitted by then BuCor head [Nicanor Faeldon], contained a number of errors,” Perete explained.
“It became incumbent upon the DOJ to review precisely the correctness of the list. So as to the question of the time element, we did not have the luxury of time at that point,” he said.
Last Sept. 4, President Duterte gave a 15-day ultimatum for the 1,914 PDLs to turn themselves in and present themselves for the re-computation of their GCTAs.
The implementation of Republic Act 10592 or the expanded application of GCTA became controversial after former Calauan Laguna Mayor Antonio Sanchez, who was convicted of murder, was reported about to be released on account of his GCTA.