Kuwait freed OFW on death row –DFA

A Filipino worker in Kuwait who was sentenced to death in 2008 for killing his Filipina partner was freed after receiving clemency, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Saturday.

Philippine Embassy in Kuwait Chargé d’Affaires and Consul General Pendosina Lomondot sent off Bienvenido Espino at the Kuwait International Airport on Aug. 30 after the Amir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, granted him clemency during the  Eid season, along with other Filipino detainees at Sulaibiya Central Jail.

Espino had been detained for 13 years.

“The Philippine government, through the embassy, had been asking the Kuwaiti government to pardon Espino. No less than then Presidents Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Benigno S. Aquino III personally appealed to His Highness The Amir," Lomondot said.

Even after his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2013, the Philippine government under President Rodrigo Duterte sought pardon for Espino.

In May 2008, the Kuwaiti Court of First Instance found Espino guilty of the murder of his Filipina partner in October 2007, and sentenced him to death by hanging.

The decision was upheld by the Kuwaiti Court of Appeals in January 2009, and by the Kuwait Court of Cassation in November 2009.

However, Espino received a tanazul or letter of forgiveness from the family of his late Filipina partner after settling the blood money for the crime.

The tanazul led to the commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment in 2013.

2007 premeditated murder case

In May 2008, GMA News Online reported Bienvenido de Vera Espino was found guilty of premeditated murder of a Filipina by Kuwait's Criminal Circuit Court and sentenced him to death by beheading.

"Immediately after the verdict, Philippine Ambassador to Kuwait Ricardo Endaya conferred with Espino's lawyer and instructed him to appeal the case to the Court of Appeals," the DFA said in a statement then.

Reports had indicated that Espino confronted Filipina Jhias Gumapac on October 30, 2007.

Espino supposedly only planned to threaten the victim for her refusal to pay for the laptop he loaned to her. But the confrontation ended in a scuffle and the accused stabbed the victim 33 times. —LBG, GMA News