Trillanes' rebellion trial resumes

Senator Antonio Trillanes IV's trial for a revived rebellion case resumed Monday, several years after the charge, filed in connection with the 2007 Manila Peninsula Siege, was dismissed.

Trillanes did not attend the hearing and was represented by his longtime lawyer, Reynaldo Robles, at the Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 150 in a proceeding that lasted less than an hour before being adjourned and scheduled to continue on July 22.

The prosecution presented Assistant State Prosecutor Mary Jane Sytat as its lone witness for the day.

Despite objection by Robles, who said Sytat was not in the list of prosecution witnesses, Judge Elmo Alameda allowed her to testify on Trillanes and other Magdalo soldiers walking out of their coup d'etat trial at the Makati RTC Branch 148 on the morning of Nov. 29, 2007.

The soldiers then marched to the Manila Peninsula Hotel and called on then-president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to step down. They surrendered on the same day.

Trillanes' lawyer, Robles, is scheduled to cross-examine Sytat on July 22. The defense lawyer told reporters after the hearing that he will try to establish that the testimony of Sytat, whom he called a "filler witness," is "irrelevant" to the case.

The rebellion case was dismissed in 2011, pursuant to the amnesty grant to Trillanes. But DOJ prosecutors moved for a reopening of the case on orders from President Rodrigo Duterte, who declared his staunch critic's amnesty void last year.

Acting on the government's motion,  Alameda ordered Trillanes arrested last Sept. 25. The senator is out on bail.

Another judge, Andres Soriano, denied the government's motion to reopen the similarly dismissed coup d'etat case against Trillanes.

Trillanes has also questioned the Duterte proclamation voiding his amnesty before the Supreme Court. —LDF, GMA News