Bella’s lawyers pick 2 witnesses

Friday, April 15, 2011

TO support their claim that the police tampered with the license plates of her Mitsubishi Pajero, Bella Ruby Santos’s lawyers asked Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 13 Judge Meinrado Paredes to subpoena a barangay captain and a Sun.Star Cebu photographer to take the witness stand.

Rameses Villagonzalo, one of Santos’s lawyers, filed a very urgent motion ex-parte for the issuance of subpoenas on Inayagan, Naga Barangay Captain Narciso Tablate and Sun.Star Cebu photographer Arni Aclao.

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Villagonzalo said the testimonies of the two persons are vital to their claim that the police tampered with the plates of the Pa-jero, one of the items seized by the police during a raid on Santos’s house in Inayagan on March 4.

The lawyer said Tablate will testify on the exact time of the enforcement of the search warrant, during which the vehicle still bore the license plate LMJ382.

Photo

Aclao’s testimony will help identify the photo of the vehicle that, the lawyer said, the photographer took at the CIDG 7 before the alleged tampering occurred.

Tablate, in an interview over radio DyLA, said the Pajero that he saw during the March
4 search by the police bore the plate number LMJ382, not LHJ382.

But he said he is not siding with Santos. He added that he could not say if the police tampered with the plate number.

“Dili ko kaingon nga police ang nagtamper kay wa ko kita (I can’t say the police tampered with it because I didn’t see them do it),” he said.

Senior Supt. Patrocinio Comendador Jr., Task Force Ellah Joy spokesperson, said they want to find out what Tablate’s interest in the case is and why “he is being antagonistic towards the action of the police.”

Closeness

Comendador said they would like to verify Tab-late’s alleged “closeness” with Santos.

He said Tablate allegedly attempted to prevent his tanods from cooperating with operatives of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) 7 during the March 4 search on Santos’s house.

Tablate said he only knows Santos as his constituent, but is not close to the woman.

Commendador said the police cannot prevent Tablate from taking the stand as the defense’s witness.

He said, though, that if their investigation reveals that the barangay official had committed an irregularity in relation to the case, the police may file administrative charges against Tablate before the Office of the Ombudsman for the Visayas or the Department of Interior and Local Government.

Tampered

Commendador said the Pajero’s license plate was tampered with by Santos’s camp, not the police’s.

A witness had issued an affidavit saying he saw a blue Pajero parked near the Calajoan, Minglanilla Elementary School in the afternoon of Feb. 8, around the same time six-year-old Ellah Joy Pique was abducted. The witness said the Pajero was
driven by a male Caucasian, who was with a Filipina.

Two other persons said they saw a male foreigner get off a dark blue Pajero with license plate number LHJ382 near Sayaw Beach in Barili, Cebu around midnight of Feb. 8. They said they saw the male foreigner remove a wrapped package from the rear of the vehicle and throw it off the cliff.

Ellah Joy’s body was at the bottom of a cliff in Barangay Sayaw, Barili.
Ruling

Santos alleged that the police tampered with the license plate on the Pajero to make it look like LHJ382.

The registered license plate of the vehicle is LMJ382.

Paredes, in his earlier ruling on the motion of Santos to nullify the search warrant used by the police for the March 4 operation at her house, denied her petition but ordered the return of the Pajero and nine other items.

Today, Paredes will tackle the partial motion for reconsideration filed by the lawyers of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) 7, which seeks to hold on to the same vehicle as evidence.

The police had filed with the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor a kidnapping with homicide case against Santos and her British boyfriend, Ian Charles Griffiths, in relation to the Ellah Joy case.

Santos has yet to recover the Pajero because the CIDG 7 said its motion for partial reconsideration is pending in court.

Santos’s lawyers asked Paredes to cite the CIDG 7 and its officers in contempt for their refusal to return the Pajero.