Bergers file human rights case against PH before UN

Friday, January 20, 2012

KAREN and Sven Erik Berger made good their threat to file a human rights violation case against the Philippine Government before the United Nations (UN).

Glen Villariza, the couple’s lawyer, said his clients filed the complaint before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland recently. The complaint named President Benigno Aquino III as respondent.

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The Bergers accused the Philippine Government of violating their human rights and are asking for $60 million in damages.

“The complainants’ dignity, human rights and civil liberties were trampled and violated by the acts of the employees of the Republic of the Philippines when they were baselessly imprisoned them for 16 days and falsely accused (them) of kidnapping and killing of Pique,” read the complaint prepared by Villariza and co-counsel Gil Tanyag.

Suspects

The couple, now based in Norway, were the first suspects in the kidnapping and killing of six-year-old Ellah Joy Pique.

Pique was reportedly abducted on Feb. 8, 2011 outside her school in Minglanilla, Cebu. Her body was found the next day at a ravine in Barili.

The Bergers, who were not yet married at that time, were apprehended at the Mactan Cebu International Airport shortly before boarding a flight to Hong Kong on Feb. 12, 2011.

They were under police custody—confined inside the Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO) headquarters—for more than two weeks, and were only released when prosecutors dismissed the complaint filed against them by the police.

The prosecutors found no basis in the complaint as an investigation by the National Bureau of Investigation found that the couple’s alibi checked out.

Other couple

A few weeks later, the CPPO, under a new chief, identified another couple—British national Ian Charles Griffiths and Cebuana Bella Ruby Santos—as suspects in the Pique case.

Santos is detained at the Naga City Jail and faces charges of kidnapping with homicide. Her boyfriend, Griffiths, is still free as the Philippine Government does not have an extradition agreement with the British Government.

Berger and Esdrelon also lodged a P220-million damage suit against four police officers and an immigration official before the Office of the Ombudsman Visayas.

The couple said the anti-graft office should file criminal and administrative cases against former provincial police chief Erson Digal, police officers Rubin Cuizon and Lamberto Hibaya, airport policewoman Donalita Sotto and immigration officer Arthur Omega for preventing them to leave abroad.

In the complaint, the couple said their reputation was damaged, not just in Norway but also in the Philippines.