Prosecutors appeal dismissal of defamation raps vs activists
Government prosecutors have filed a motion for reconsideration and also asked the judge who earlier dismissed the oral defamation charges against environmental activists Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano to inhibit herself from the case.
“[T]he Honorable Presiding Judge has already ruled on the merits of the case without affording the prosecution the opportunity to present evidence to prove all the elements of the two informations,” said the 10-page pleading signed by a panel of prosecutors led by Provincial Prosecutor Ramoncito Ocampo.
The two motions, one for reconsideration and the other for inhibition due to “reasonable doubt” about the judge’s impartiality, were filed on Monday before the Plaridel, Bulacan Municipal Trial Court.
“The prosecution is of the honest belief that the Honorable Judge cannot be expected to maintain the cold neutrality of an impartial Judge in resolving this motion for reconsideration and in trying these cases in view of her pronouncement in the assailed joint order, that the accused’s utterances were not malicious,” the prosecutors said.
In a statement sent to the Inquirer, Dino de Leon, the legal counsel of Tamano and Castro, called out the government for “persecuting and silencing” environmental activists pushing for the preservation of Manila Bay.
“The Supreme Court already affirmed the fact that [my clients] were abducted. When will the government hold accountable those who are responsible for the abduction?” De Leon said.
“Worse, instead of helping [them] recover, it is the one authoring the continuation of their suffering. We call on the Marcos administration to forthwith correct its acts of injustices in this case,” he added.
Plot twist
Castro and Tamano went missing in Bataan in September 2023. They were presented to the media by authorities over two weeks later as rebel returnees. The women, however, said they were abducted by the military and held against their will.
This prompted the Department of Justice to file charges of perjury against them, on top of separate charges of grave oral defamation.
In a ruling issued on June 4, Presiding Judge Sheila Geronimo-Orquillas granted the motion of Tamano and Castro to quash the charges against them after ruling that their statements in the press briefing were not malicious but “statements of facts.”
In seeking reconsideration of the cases’ dismissal, the prosecutors argued that the court erred when it made a “sweeping assertion” that the pair was abducted upon the order of state agents.
