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Palace dismisses Trillanes’ tale of surveillance, calls senator paranoid


Malacañang on Tuesday shrugged off the claim of opposition Senator Antonio Trillanes IV that his house was under surveillance.

Trillanes has released to the media a CCTV footage of what he claimed to be a "highly suspicious activity" of vehicles roaming around the vicinity of his house.

The senator earlier aborted a plan to leave his Senate office, where he has been holed up since President Rodrigo Duterte revoked the amnesty granted to him in 2011, after motorcycle-riding men tried tailing his car.

"First it’s drama. And now it appears to be paranoia," presidential spokesperson Harry Roque told reporters.

Roque added the government has left the issue on Trillanes' amnesty to the courts.

Trillanes had asked the Supreme Court to nullify Duterte’s Proclamation 572 which declared the amnesty void after the lawmaker allegedly failed to apply for it and did not express guilt for his crimes involving the Oakwood Mutiny in 2003 and Manila Peninsula Siege in 2007.

Duterte later said the Aquino administration erred in granting Trillanes an amnesty because it was then Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin instead of then President Benigno Aquino III who signed the document.

The senator insisted that he had complied with the requirements for the amnesty.

He is also fighting the bid of the Department of Justice for the two courts in Makati City to issue an arrest warrant and hold departure order in connection with his rebellion and coup d' etat cases. 

The President made it clear last week that authorities should not arrest Trillanes in the absence of a court-issued warrant.

Duterte also said "nobody's interested" to arrest Trillanes, a staunch critic of the President's controversial policies including the war on drugs and on the South China Sea dispute

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