Wednesday, May 28, 2008 Gonzalez junks plea v. ruling on shabu tiangge
JUSTICE Secretary Raul Gonzalez Sr. on Tuesday turned down the appeal of police officers seeking consideration of the Pasig Prosecutor's Office ruling issued about the same time a year ago that dismissed the murder charges against Amin Imam Boratong, suspected operator of the infamous shabu tiangge (flea market) in the city.
Boratong was the principal suspect in the killing of German Colisao, a media and police asset who supposedly took a video footage of the drug den, which was later on dismantled by the Pasig City Government after a raid.
The Eastern Police District Office (Epdo) and state witness Samir Palao sought the reversal of an earlier decision of the justice department to drop the murder charges against Boratong, his second wife Memie, Police Officer 2 Ramir Along and Nashir Labay.
In a resolution, Gonzalez denied the motion for reconsideration filed by the Epdo and Palao seeking to sustain the indictment of Boratong.
Palao, who was once working for Boratong, told investigators that Boratong and Memie had ordered Colisao killed after the victim was discovered taking video footage of the shabu market on November 14, 2005.
But Gonzalez said the police evidence failed to show that the respondents were responsible for Colisao's death.
"For failure of herein complainant to present additional proof and evidence clearly showing that respondents authored the murder of Colisao, we are constrained to deny the instant case. For determination of probable cause may not solely rest on conjectures and surmises but on concrete proof positively showing person's culpability on the crime charge," he said.
Gonzalez junked the argument of the Epdo to cite the case of Crespo vs Mogul of the Supreme Court that once a complaint is filed in the court, any disposition of the case as its dismissal or conviction or acquittal of the accused rests in the sound discretion of the court.
He said there is nothing in the Crespo case that prohibits the justice secretary from accepting or deciding on an appeal filed by an accused.
Gonzalez also questioned the credibility of Palao and ordered the withdrawal of the information for murder filed against the respondents in court.
In his May 23, 2007 decision, Gonzalez said despite Palao's positive identification of the suspect, the police failed to establish a chain of events that Boratong indeed authored Colisao's killing, and that complainant's statements were adequate to justify a reasonable conclusion that the killing of the victim was perpetrated by respondent Boratong.
According to the police, Colisao was allegedly caught with a hidden video camera by Boratong's henchmen inside the shabu tiangge compound. With discovery of the hidden video camera, Colisao was allegedly kept at the Mapayapa compound in Pasig City by the Boratongs.
A barangay official went to Boratong's house to look for Colisao with a promise from GMA-7 that the TV network would not air the video footage if Colisao was released, but Memie denied keeping him. She then allegedly ordered Colisao killed.
Police said Colisao was killed on November 17, 2005. His body, with three gunshot wounds, was dumped on a Pasig street.
The drug den was later on demolished by the City Government in February 2007 after the raid, effectively destroying whatever evidence could be had.
Aside from the drug charges pending before the Pasig Regional Trial Court (RTC), Palao is also facing murder charges before the Quezon City RTC, and frustrated murder raps before the Digos City RTC in Davao for kidnapping and killing the brother of Memie.
Boratong, who is detained at the NBI detention facility, is a native of Marawi City. He was arrested along with his first wife Sheryl Molera on November 22 last year in Makati by agents of the NBI, who claimed that the suspect's illegal drug business had grown to a P900-million industry since he started in 1997. (ECV/Sunnex)
