(Eagle News) — Senator Antonio Trillanes IV on Thursday, Sept. 6, presented documents he said would show that he applied for amnesty in connection with the Oakwood mutiny and Manila Peninsula siege in 2003 and 2007, respectively.
The documents, which he said he sourced from his “friends from the Armed Forces of the Philippines,” included what was supposed to be a letter from the then-Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin that said the applications of the 38 officers and 53 enlisted personnel for amnesty were “in order,” and a final list of supposed applicants for amnesty as of January 5, 2011, based allegedly on the-then Department of National Defense’s Ad Hoc Amnesty Committee.
The alleged ad hoc committee’s list under Resolution Number 2 included Trillanes’ name.
A news clipping of Trillanes holding up what the photo caption said was his filled-out application form for amnesty was also presented.
Presidential Proclamation No. 572 had cited as bases for declaring void ab initio the amnesty granted to Trillanes a certification issued by the AFP that said that the senator did not file an official application form for the amnesty in the first place, and that said a copy of Trillanes’ application was “not available.”
The proclamation also noted what it said was the fact that Trillanes “never expressed his guilt for the crimes that were committed.”
For this, the proclamation quoted Trillanes as saying that he and his colleagues then were “not admitting guilt to the mutiny and coup d’etat charges lodged against them both in the civil and the military courts.”
According to the proclamation, Trillanes also said the following: “I would like to qualify that we did not admit to the charge of coup d’etat or anything na ifinile sa amin kasi we believe na hindi yun ang nararapat na icharge sa amin.”
Trillanes denied he never expressed guilt for the crimes. Meanne Corvera
