Petitioners urge SC to void Anti-Terrorism Act section on warrantless detentions

According to Albay Representative Edcel Lagman, he and "37 kindred groups of petitioners" who questioned the constitutionality of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 on Monday filed "six-clustered memoranda in support of their consolidated petitions" with the Supreme Court.

In a statement, Lagman said that among their petitions was for the high court to void Section 29 of the ATA which allows for detention without a judicial warrant of arrest.

"No less than its subtitle, which reads 'Detention without Judicial Warrant of Arrest,' is an express admission that the written authorization of the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) for the arrest and detention of a terrorist suspect is a violation of Section 2 of Article III of the Bill of Rights which mandates that no person can be arrested without a warrant of arrest solely issued by a judge upon finding of probable cause," he said.

Lagman said the ATC, which is a purely executive agency, "cannot be vested with the power to issue a warrant of arrest."

"Since detention is the logical consequence of an arrest or taking into custody of a suspect, the written authorization of the ATC includes the seizure of the suspect, which can only be ordered by a judge," he said.

He added that the limited periods of detention of a person under Article 125 of the Revised Penal Code, within which the detained person shall be delivered to the judicial authorities, cannot be suspended or cast aside, particularly if the detention is arbitrary because no judicial warrant of arrest has been issued.

"The arrest and detention of a person on mere suspicion violates the constitutional requirement that there must be probable cause before a person can be arrested. "

"The arrest and detention under Section 29 are not among the three limited instances of warrantless arrest under Section 5 of Rule 113 of the Rules of Court which can be amended solely by the Supreme Court, not by legislation like the ATA," Lagman argued.

Further, the attempt of the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) on the ATA to cure the constitutional infirmities of Section 29 is "an exercise in futility because the IRR as a mere administrative issuance cannot supplement, modify, amend, or cure the substantive law which it seeks to implement.

"The inordinately long detention period of a maximum of 24 days authorized under Section 29 violates the constitutional guarantees of the right to due process, right against unreasonable seizures or arrests, right to presumption of innocence, right to bail, right to speedy disposition of one’s case, right against torture, right to secure the writs of habeas corpus and Amparo, where time is of the essence in the effective exercise of said rights," he said.

Lagman also pointed out that a long period of detention without judicial warrant, intervention, and oversight violated the international covenants, of which the Philippines is a state party, prohibiting arbitrary arrests and arbitrary detention. — DVM, GMA News