A
team from the Philippine National Police is in Thailand to fetch and bring home
former Palawan governor Joel Reyes and his brother Mario, former mayor of
Coron. The brothers are wanted here for
allegedly masterminding the 2011 murder of Palawan journalist and environmental
activist Gerardo Ortega.
Joel
Reyes’ lawyer, Ferdinand Topacio, maintained that because the Court of Appeals
has twice struck down the bases for indicting the brothers for the murder of
Ortega, the warrants for their arrest issued by a Palawan trial court are null
and void.
He
also urged De Lima and other politicians to stop using the Ortega murder case
for media mileage.
But
De Lima argued that the warrants remain valid since the court has not ordered
their recall.
The
Reyes brothers, who fled the country in March 2012, just before the warrants
for their arrest were issued, were arrested in Phuket, Thailand over the
weekend for immigration violations.
De
Lima said she decided not to send a team from the National Bureau of
Investigation to fetch the brothers, leaving it up to the police Criminal
Investigation and Detection Group to do so.
“That (CIDG) team, which can be considered as
an arresting team, has to return the warrant to the court that issued it, so
the court can issue a commitment order on where the two would be detained,” she
explained, but added that the brothers might be temporarily detained at the PNP
Custodial Center in Camp Crame.
The
two will be deported for overstaying and not for the criminal case they are
facing in the Philippines, according to the Task Force Tugis and Ambassador
Aragon.
The
two had been under surveillance for three years, with Task Force Tugis and the
Interpol in Thailand coordinating to determine that the suspects were the Reyes
brothers wanted in the Philippines and hiding in Thailand.
Image by kickerdaily.com
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