(Eagle News) – Chief presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo said he would “go over” the amnesty earlier granted by former President Benigno Aquino III to senator Antonio Trillanes IV.
Panelo said Trillanes could be sent back to jail if it would be found that the amnesty given to Trillanes was invalid.
“I don’t know of the facts of the case yet but there are some legal quarters expressing the same uncertainty or doubt on that. I’ll go over the case. Then, I’ll give you my proper response,” he told reporters in Malacañang.
“Anything that is not the law can be a precedent. It is always in the context of the law. So kung nagbigay siya ng amnesty na mali, eh hindi valid iyon. But I don’t know the facts of the case,” Panelo explained.
But he clarified that this should not be considered as “persecution” on the part of government as frequently claimed by Trillanes.
“We are not in the business of persecuting people. We are in the business of prosecuting people who violate the law and as the President says, it is his duty to protect and serve the people,” Panelo said.
Trillanes led the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny against then former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo when he and some 300 junior officers and enlisted men of the Armed Forces of the Philippines took over the Oakwood towers in Makati City as protest for alleged rampant corruption in the Philippine government and in the Philippine military.
He was detained for almost seven and a half years.
According to the Fact Finding Commission created by then President Arroyo, incidents leading to the mutiny were not unplanned and spontaneous as claimed then by Trillanes.
The facts gathered by the Commission show that extensive planning and preparations for several months had preceded the events of July 27, 2003.
In November 2007, while he was already a senator, he staged another siege, this time at the Manila Peninsula Hotel in Makati. After walking out of his court hearing on the Oakwood mutiny case, he and Brigadier General Danilo Lim led their supporters to the hotel where they staged another coup d’ etat calling on the public to join them.
Six hours later, after military teams surrounded the hotel and armored personnel carriers broke through the hotel’s front doors, Trillanes and his companions surrendered.
In October 2010, then President Benigno Aquino III signed a proclamation granting amnesty to Trillanes and other officers and enlisted men accused of trying to overthrow the previous Arroyo government.
Aquino signed Amnesty Proclamation No. 50 which effectively absolved the remaining handful of officers and men of any criminal liability in the three uprisings from 2003 to 2007 against then President Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo.
Two months later, in December 2010, Trillanes was given provisional freedom pending the recognition of the court’s amnesty declaration of then-President Aquino.