Court resets Trillanes arraignment on Bikoy case

A Quezon City court has deferred the arraignment of former senator Antonio Trillanes IV on a conspiracy to commit sedition case as he moves for the outright dismissal of the charges.

Trillanes was supposed to be arraigned Thursday but the court reset the proceeding because a motion to quash the charge is still pending, said his lawyer, Rey Robles.

The former senator has moved to join the motion to quash filed by another defendant, Joselito Saracho, who argued the case should be dismissed because it failed to "validly charge" them with conspiracy to commit sedition.

Trillanes, Saracho, and 9 others face charges over their alleged agreement to accuse President Rodrigo Duterte and his family of drug links as part of an alleged plot to discredit the administration.

The allegations were largely based on the word of Peter Joemel Advincula alias Bikoy, who claims he witnessed the supposed opposition plot. Advincula claimed he was the narrator of the "Ang Totoong Narcolist" video series.

The charge is conspiracy to commit sedition under Article 141 of the Revised Penal Code -- a bailable offense that is distinct from the graver crimes of sedition or inciting to sedition.

Some of the other accused, Fr. Flaviano Villanueva and Fr. Albert Alejo, pleaded not guilty during their arraignment.

In the motion to quash, Saracho said the charge is "irreparably defective" and should be dismissed.

He claimed that the facts alleged in the information, or the official charge, do not constitute an offense. He said the charge does not contain any factual allegations of the purported conspiracy other than the approximate time and place of the alleged commission of the crime.

"Clearly, the Information is fatally lacking in several of the specific details required such as the particulars of the actual agreement between the accused to commit conspiracy to sedition, the minutiae of their planned public uprising, and the exact manner on how the accused finally decided to commit the planned crime of sedition," he said in the motion.

Saracho said a long trial that would end with an acquittal because the charge was void to begin with "is totally unjust and inhuman, adds to the unnecessary clogging of dockets, and should not be countenanced by the Court."

The conspiracy to commit sedition case is pending before the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 138.

Trillanes faces two other cases for inciting to sedition before the Pasay courts over his statements against Duterte. He is also charged with rebellion in a revived case before the Makati Regional Trial Court. — RSJ, GMA News