Tacloban court junks terror funding rap vs NGO exec
TACLOBAN CITY—A court here dismissed three counts of terrorism financing charges against a nongovernmental organization (NGO) worker over the government’s failure to officially publish the terrorist designation of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA) before the alleged offenses were committed.
In a 14-page order dated Feb. 27, Presiding Judge Georgina Uy Perez of Tacloban Regional Trial Court Branch 45, granted Jazmin Jerusalem’s motion to dismiss, describing the prosecution’s case as “fatally flawed.”
Jerusalem, executive director of Leyte Center for Development Inc., was charged under Section 8(ii) of Republic Act (RA) No. 10168, or the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012, for allegedly providing funds and assorted goods to the CPP-NPA on three occasions in 2013, 2014 and 2016.
The complaint was filed in November 2024 by the police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group based on affidavits executed by former rebels. Jerusalem described the allegations as “full of lies.”
The court said: “The absence of the required publication before the alleged commission of the offenses is fatal to the prosecution’s case.”
The court cited the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Tañada v. Tuvera (G.R. No. L-63915), which held that publication of laws and issuances is an indispensable component of due process.
The court was not swayed by the prosecution’s argument that the CPP and NPA had already been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States, the European Union, and New Zealand as early as 2002. The court said Section 15 of RA 10168 requires the Department of Foreign Affairs to publish the list of designated persons and organizations for such designation to have legal force domestically.
The court pointed to a crucial gap in the timeline—the alleged offenses occurred in 2013, 2014 and 2016, while Proclamation No. 374, which formally designated the CPP and NPA as terrorist organizations locally, was published only on Dec. 5, 2017.
An advisory on foreign terrorist designations was published even later, on April 16, 2019, the court said.
