MANILA, Philippines—This is the third time within the week that an amparo petitioner was denied.

Another petition for protection under the writ of amparo has been rejected by the Court of Appeals, this time involving a consultant of the Communist Party of the Philippines’ political wing.

According to the court, National Democratic Front (NDF) consultant Elizabeth Principe is being legally detained, and there is no proof that she was tortured by the authorities who captured her.

It also said Principe’s husband, Leo Velasco, another reported NDF consultant who remains missing, was not shown to have been abducted by the police.

The appellate court issued the ruling dated July 17 in the course of denying the petition for habeas corpus and amparo filed by Lorena Santos, the daughter of Principe and Velasco, who sought to have her mother freed and her father found.

But the court said Santos had “miserably failed” to support her allegations about her parents, as well as her claim that she herself had been under threat.

The respondents in Santos’ petition are President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, Philippine National Police Director General Avelino Razon Jr. and then Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon.

Psychological torture

In her petition, Santos said Principe, who was arrested in November 2007, was subjected to psychological torture and threatened with harm if she would not divulge her purported participation in subversive activities.

Santos questioned the validity of the arrest warrants issued against her mother, which, she said, had not been presented to her.

She said Velasco was taken in February last year by plainclothesmen accompanied by a man wearing a shirt marked with the letters “CIDG.” She said she had also felt under threat.

She asked the court to grant her parents a temporary protection order, and to direct the police to free her mother and look for her father.

But in the ruling written by Justice Myran Dimaranan-Vidal, the court granted none of Santos’ pleas.

It cited the testimony of Supt. Honorio Agnila, who led the arresting officers, that while they did not bring with them Principe’s arrest warrant, they had informed her of her constitutional rights and the reason for her arrest.

It said Agnila, who was also cross-examined, had substantially complied with the requirements for arrests, and added that the non-presentation of the warrant was within the bounds of law.

Valid arrest

The appellate court said a writ of amparo was intended to protect a person’s liberty from an illegal or unjustified detention.

“Evidently, Principe’s case does not fall within the purview of this situation considering that there was a valid judicial process justifying her arrest and detention. A valid arrest can not at all be deemed a violation of a person’s right to liberty,” it said.

As for the allegation of torture, the court said these appeared to be made by rote by arrested people.

“We hold the allegation of Principe’s torture while in detention as the usual and common imputations raised by prisoners on the dock against their captors, which, absent any persuasive and plausible evidence, is undeserving of our consideration,” it said.

As for Santos’ claim that she had been under threat, the court said the text messages she had presented to prove her claim, and in which the unidentified sender had asked her if she and her housemates were already asleep, did not appear to be too alarming as to warrant court protection.

No evidence

Said the court: “Evidently, aside from the fact that the source of the text message remains undisclosed, the tenor of the said messages cannot be considered as that kind of threat for it to come within the purview of the rule of the writ of amparo. This court holds that such a message does not even contain any badge of imminent threat, constitutive of violation of [Santos’] fundamental rights.”

Ruling on Velasco’s case, the appellate court said Santos’ evidence did not support her claim that the police was responsible for her father’s disappearance.

It said she had not presented to the court the witnesses who supposedly saw her father being shoved into a van and taken away.

It also said that while the writ of amparo did not give the presumption of regularity to public authorities’ actions, those who seek protection under it should make the effort to substantiate their claims.

“It must be stressed that even under the rule on the writ of amparo, which notably dispensed with the presumption of regularity on the part of the government agents, this court is still duty-bound to adjudicate cases based on the evidence submitted or presented before [it]. Clearly, in the instant case, [Santos] miserably failed to prove her case before us, not even by a shred of evidence,” it said.

The court also cited a report of the Commission on Human Rights saying that after an investigation, it had concluded that the identity of the victim of an alleged abduction and its supposed perpetrators could not be ascertained.

Angry

Sought for comment, Santos said she had put her faith in the court and that she became angry when she read its ruling.

“After we presented all our evidence and after seeing the reaction of the justices, it appeared that they would uphold our rights,” she said, adding that she and her lawyers were considering questioning the ruling before the Supreme Court.

Santos and the siblings of missing activist Jonas Burgos yesterday held a rally outside the Court of Appeals to protest the dismissal of their pleas for the writ of amparo.

Burgos, son of the late press freedom fighter Joe Burgos, has not been seen since he was taken from a Quezon City mall by a group of armed men in April 2007.