eople who were convicted for the killing of martial law-era military officer Colonel Rolando Abadilla – are innocent. Father Robert Reyes and lawyer Argee Guevarra, in an effort to secure the release of Senior Police Officer 2 Cesar Fontana, Rameses de Jesus, Lenido Lumanog, Joel de Jesus, and Augusto Santos, filed a verified manifestation to persuade the Supreme Court to reverse its earlier decision upholding the conviction of the 5.
The 5 men earlier filed a motion for reconsideration before the Supreme Court. The lawyers of Reyes and Gueverra, Attorneys Luke Espiritu and Resty Mendoza, said the move should compel the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision that allegedly ignored vital pieces of evidence that the priest presented during the trial. In his pleading before the Supreme Court, Reyes said that sometime in January 2000, he was approached by an Alex Boncayao Brigade (ABB) leader who confessed to him that it was an ABB hit squad that carried out the assassination of Abadilla. The man said that the 5, who were on trial in the sala of Regional Trial Court Judge Jaime Salazar, were not ABB operatives and could not have been involved in the assassination. The alleged ABB leader also entrusted to the priest a gold-plated Omega watch that the communist death squad members reportedly took from Abadilla immediately after his ambush. Abadilla’s service firearm that was taken by the ABB partisans was not turned over to Reyes. Guevarra served as the link for the meeting between the ABB leader and Reyes that took place 11 years ago. In his corroborating manifestation, Guevarra said the political head of the ABB team that carried out the assassination confided to him 11 years ago that it was the communist organization's decision to mete out punishment to Abadilla for his alleged involvement in torture and summary execution of political dissidents during Martial Law.
Guevarra quoted the former ABB head as having protested the plight of the Abadilla 5: "The assassination of Colonel Abadilla was carried out in pursuit of revolutionary justice to those murdered and tortured by him, and we cannot allow his death to inflict injustice against others, especially against the innocents." Reyes and Guevarra also expressed hope that the Supreme Court will take judicial notice of the Office of the Ombudsman's recent decision to file criminal charges against 15 policemen for the illegal arrest and "tortured" confessions taken from the Abadilla 5 that led to their conviction. They also cited Department of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima's plan to study the possibility of recommending conditional pardon for the Abadilla 5, whom the human rights community believes to be innocent. "In this exceptional and extraordinary case of the Abadilla 5, the Supreme Court must consider that it is not only a court of law and a dispenser of justice, but an institution that recognizes the truth, which had been twisted and tortured during the litigation before the regional trial court,” lawyers Espiritu and Mendoza said.
