Trillanes applied for amnesty, execs tell Makati court

At least three witnesses told a Makati court on Friday that Senator Antonio Trillanes IV filed an application for amnesty even as documents that would support the claim remained missing.

During a whole-day hearing at the Makati Regional Trial Court's Branch 148 on Friday, two former and incumbent officials of the Department of National Defense (DND) and a journalist corroborated Trillanes' claim that he applied for the amnesty.

A proclamation by President Rodrigo Duterte declared the amnesty given Trillanes void because he supposedly did not apply for the relief and failed to admit any wrongdoing. 

Col. Josefa Berbigal, the head of secretariat of the committee tasked to process amnesty applications in accordance with a proclamation by former president Benigno Aquino III, testified that she administered the oath to Trillanes when he submitted his application form in January 2011.

This form, she said, contained a section on admission of guilt.

Former Defense undersecretary Honorio Azcueta, the chair of the department ad hoc committee, said he was convinced that Trillanes complied with the requirements for amnesty.

Asked separately, Berbigal and Azcueta said there was neither a receiving copy nor a duplicate copy of Trillanes' application form.

Apart from this form, they also agreed that the senators also submitted a "narration of facts."

The prosecution also brought to the witness stand then GMA News Online reporter and current news section editor Mark Merueñas, who covered Trillanes' availment of the amnesty.

Merueñas, a former Defense beat reporter, testified on his 2011 article which reported Trillanes submitting his amnesty application form and telling journalists that while he and other Magdalo soldiers admitted "violating some rules," they did not admit guilt to coup d'etat or any other charge filed against them in court.

Merueñas responded in the affirmative when asked by defense lawyer Reynaldo Robles if he witnessed Trillanes filing his amnesty application form.

On questioning by acting Prosecutor General Richard Anthony Fadullon, Merueñas said Trillanes qualified his admission of guilt in an ambush interview with reporters.

Judge Andres Soriano had called for the hearing in connection with the Department of Justice's (DOJ) motion seeking an arrest warrant and a hold departure order against the senator.

The DOJ argued Soriano still had jurisdiction over the coup d'etat case against Trillanes that was dismissed in 2011.

The Makati RTC Branch 150, which handled Trillanes' rebellion case, has already ordered Trillanes' arrest but allowed him to post bail.

Missing records

Despite witnesses' statements on Trillanes applying for amnesty, Fadullon countered that the "best evidence" remained to be the records and documents of the application, none of which could be found and thus could not be presented in court.

During the same hearing, Lieutenant Colonel Thea Joan Andrade of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) affirmed her earlier written certification that there is "no available copy" of Trillanes' amnesty application form in AFP records.

More, DND legal affairs chief Norman Daanoy testified that he found no records of minutes of deliberations and other proceedings relating to amnesty applications pursuant to the implementation of Proclamation No. 75, issued in 2010.

Issued in 2010, this Aquino order granted amnesty to former and active military and police personnel and their supporters who may have committed offenses in connection with the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny, the 2006 Marines stand-off, and the 2007 Manila Peninsula Siege.

Meanwhile, Berbigal said she had turned over the original copy of Trillanes' amnesty application form and supporting documents to Azcueta, the committee chair, for forwarding to the Secretary of National Defense.

Photocopies of the documents, which she said were used during the deliberations of the five-member committee, while retrieved by her staff, were "no longer taken seriously."

However, Azcueta said he returned the documents to the secretariat, which Berbigal headed. —NB, GMA News