(Eagle News)—Rappler’s Maria Ressa spent the night in the National Bureau of Investigation office after she was unable to post bail for the cyber libel case filed against her.
Ressa’s camp had attempted to post bail on Wednesday, Feb. 13, but a Pasay court, according to her, refused to accept this because they could not provide the information sheet.
Ressa’s camp had questioned the timing of the issuance of the warrant of arrest against her, saying the fact that it came on Wednesday afternoon meant she would be forced to spend the night in jail.
But Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo denied this was the case, saying what was “frowned upon” was the issuance of a warrant on Friday afternoon.
This would have meant, he said, that a person would have been forced to spend the entire weekend in jail as he or she would have been able to post bail only on Monday, upon the resumption of office hours.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra for his part said Ressa’s lawyers should have anticipated her arrest and posted bail before the warrant was issued.
Guevarra pointed out the information against Ressa was filed in court as early as last week.
Ressa, Rappler Inc. and its former reporter Reynaldo Santos were charged in connection with a Rappler article published in 2012 about businessman Wilfredo Keng, whom it described as “controversial,” as having “shady deals,” and as being linked to human trafficking and smuggling.
The article claimed Keng lent a sport utility vehicle to then-Chief Justice Renato Corona, who was facing an impeachment case at that time.
Keng has repeatedly denied owning the SUV.
Keng asked Rappler to take down the article but the news outfit instead edited it in 2014.
Ressa has slammed the arrest as part of the government’s efforts to silence critical media, adding, among others, that the Cybercrime Prevention Act, which was enacted in September 2012, could not apply retroactively to article, which was published in the same year but a month before, in August.
The Department of Justice, however, citing a Supreme Court decision that says the republication or modification of an article constituted a separate offense from the publication itself of such, said the fact that the article was edited in 2014, after the enactment of the cyberlaw, meant it was covered by such a law.
The DOJ also denied the prescription period for the filing of the case already expired, as argued by Rappler.
According to the DOJ, the cybercrime law specifically states that the punishment for the offense was one degree higher than that of libel.
The DOJ said R.A. No. 3326, which governs the prescription of offenses punished by special laws, such as the cybercrime law, said “the prescriptive period of the offense charged is 12 years..”
