JUSTICE Secretary Leila de Lima insisted that the preliminary investigation of the illegal detention charges filed against the advisory council of the Iglesia Ni Cristo will proceed even as she denied that she took unusual interest in the case over more important ones pending in her office.
“Preliminary investigation is an occasion where the DoJ performs a ministerial function. Once we receive complaint, the DoJ has no option but to conduct an investigation,” De Lima said. “No one is exempt from these standard procedures,” she added.
De Lima denied she gave “extraordinary attention” to the Samson complaint because she was just doing her job.
But Iglesia Ni Cristo leaders said they staged a crippling protest on Metro Manila’s main thoroughfare, Epifanio delos Santos Avenue, precisely because of De Lima’s inordinate interest in the case.
Dean Serafin Cuevas Jr. of the INC-owned New Era University College of Law said they could only conclude that De Lima was unusually interested in the case because she personally ordered National Bureau of Investigation to probe the case.
But when NBI probers said there was no proof of a crime having been committed, De Lima overruled the NBI and said there was a possibility that a crime had indeed been committed even before the conclusion of preliminary investigation.
“When those words come from the mouth of the Secretary of Justice, that betrays prejudice, partiality and bias,” Cuevas said.
Cuevas said they were not against the investigation of the case, but against De Lima’s partiality.
“She even personally received the complaint from [expelled INC minister] Isaias Samson Jr., and accompanied him to the prosecutor who is to investigate the case. That is unusual and tells the investigating prosecutor that she is interested in the case,” Cuevas said.
Cuevas said De Lima should have let the case undergo the same process through which other more important cases went through, including the Mamasapano massacre that included two INC members.
Under DoJ procedures, docketed complaints are assigned to state prosecutors who will conduct the PI. Hearings will then be held where the respondents are asked to answer the charges by appearing and submitting counter-affidavits.
At the end of the preliminary investigation, the prosecutors determine whether or not there exists probable cause in the charges to warrant the filing of cases in courts. Otherwise, the complaints are dismissed.
There are two complaints against the INC advisory council. One by Samson and the other by another expelled member Lito Fruto.
Samson, his wife Myrna Dionela and son Isaiah filed charges of harassment, illegal detention, threats and coercion against advisory council members Glicero Santos Jr., Radel Cortez, Bienvenido Santiago Sr., Mathusalem Pareja, Rolando Esguerra, Eraño Codera, Rodelio Cabrerra and Maximo Bularan.
Fruto, on the other hand, filed harassment charges against the members of the INC Sanggunian for supposedly concocting rape charges that led to the issuance of an arrest warrant and hold departure order against him after he sided with Angel and Lottie Manalo, siblings of current INC executive minister Eduardo Manalo who were also expelled after going against the church’s leadership.
Fruto said his troubles with the INC started when he answered a post of Ka Lottie in Facebook asking for help because there are vehicles following her brother Angel.