UK court set Feb. 20 hearing on custody of Iggy Arroyo remains

The remains of Negros Occidental Rep. Ignacio “Iggy” Arroyo will not yet be repatriated from the United Kingdom as a court there scheduled a hearing to settle the dispute on who should have custody of his body.   Balita Pinoy, a news site on Filipinos in the UK, said Justice Peter Smith of the Chancery Division of the UK High Court of Justice set a hearing on February 20 at 10:30 a.m. (UK time) for “anyone with an interest in the case [to] provide evidence.”   Arroyo’s second wife, Aleli, flew to the UK last week to claim the representative’s remains and repatriate it to the Philippines, but she was blocked by a suit filed by Arroyo’s partner, Grace Ibuna.   The Balita Pinoy report said the hearing was initially scheduled on February 17, but Smith ordered its delay to enable Ibuna to “provide concrete evidence that she has the authority to handle Iggy Arroyo’s body.”   Ibuna is claiming rights over Arroyo’s body with a will the late congressman drew up and signed in San Francisco, California.   Smith, however, said “that at this stage, it appears Ibuna has no rights in the matter,” the report said, adding that the judge “also stated that this case wasn’t about the body, but was really about inheritance.”   Upon the announcement of the court hearing, a representative from funeral parlor JH Kenyon raised concerns over the decomposition of Arroyo’s body. Smith asked if the body “could be deep frozen to stop this [from] happening.”   The Negros representative, brother of former First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo, died in London two weeks ago due to a lingering liver ailment. — Rose-An Dioquino/ELR, GMA News