FJBM reaction to the SC ruling

This is an atrocity against our family and against our people’s right to seek swift justice.

After three years of my son’s disappearance, and after a previous Supreme Court decision on July 16, 2007 granting our petition for habeas corpus, the same Supreme Court, in classic Pontius Pilate style, has now passed the case back on to the Commission on Human Rights for a “more meaningful investigation.”

We are, therefore, back to square one more than three years after the military and the police abducted my son. This, in spite of a writ of amparo we were granted by the appellate court in December 2007.

This is blatantly a whitewash disguised as judicial hogwash. The writ of amparo, much-trumpeted by the Supreme Court, has become merely a tool of the courts to further obfuscate and muddle the issue.

Citing “significant lapses” in the official investigation conducted by the PNP and AFP . Justice delayed is justice denied. But the Supreme Court seems not to be on the side of truth and justice but wallows in indecision and official deniability.

Despite the slow pace in the case, my family continued to respect the process even if we already felt that there was a cover-up in the abduction of my son by no less than our Iaw enforcers.

Now, do we have to pray again for the CHR to live up to this challenge of another investigation? But we have a CHR chair who is about to leave her post to assume a Cabinet position. Do we appeal to her to “please finish your investigation before you take on another sensitive post in government” this time?

I have consulted my lawyer Atty. Ricardo Fernandez, and he too was surprised that with the voluminous documents that were forwarded to the courts, the SC will now say that the Armed Forces of the Philippine and the Philippine National Police should make available to CHR pertinent documents and records. He wonders why the high court is again ordering a full probe of the case by the Commission on Human Rights when Jonas’s case had supposedly been previously investigated by the police, the military, the Justice Department and even the CHR.

Obviously the Supreme Court is washing its hands over the alleged cover up of the investigation. It did not even give a hint on whether or not the military officers and personnel that we have linked to the disappearance are guilty or not.

In the meantime, we are forced to continue searching for my missing son.

I believe that he is still alive, and his military captors must surface him. If he is dead, they must show me his body, and justice must prevail.