‘Spider-Man’ free after paying P1K fine

FREE French daredevil Alain Robert shows a copy of the Inquirer with his stunt on the cover after being ordered to pay a P1,000 fine by the Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 63 on Friday. -MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

It took extreme urban climber Alain Robert two hours to climb one side of the 217-meter GT International Tower in Makati’s business district on Tuesday.

On Friday morning, the 56-year-old daredevil, better known as French Spider-Man, spent all but five minutes in a Makati court, where he pleaded guilty to the charge of alarm and scandal.

After being slapped a P1,000 fine, Robert was again a free man.

“I’m happy because I can climb again tomorrow,” he joked. “I need to think of my next crime.”

Robert’s court appearance came three days after he was arrested by the police for free-scaling, or climbing without safety gear, the ninth-tallest tower in the country without a permit.

The Frenchman has climbed several of the world’s tallest structures, including Eiffel Tower in Paris, Empire State Building in New York City and Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Almost all of these feats were done without harnesses and safety gear.

Robert said a French colleague had convinced him to check out Manila and its nearby cities.

“I was here a long time ago and Makati at the time was not yet [like this],” he recalled. “Then as I was traveling around, [Manila] was along the way… I just checked my calendar. Was I free? Yes,” he said.

What made the GT tower adventure different, he said, was the descent, in which he needed complete “mental preparation.”

Usually, he explained, he would enter the building after reaching its summit and ride the elevator down.

But the GT tower’s fin top—a prominent fixture in the Makati skyline—meant that he would have to descend the same way he had gone up.

Robert’s legal counsel, Howard Calleja, said they would pay the fine on Friday and appeal to the Makati police for the return of the P3,000 bond the Frenchman had posted for his temporary liberty, as well as the climbing belt they had confiscated.

At the court hearing, Robert appeared visibly at ease in leather pants and ankle boots as he indulged fans asking to take selfies with him.

“I was happily surprised to see [that] many people love me. [Only] the judge, it seems, didn’t ask for a selfie,” he said, adding that he found Filipinos “nice and smiley.”

GT Tower representatives did not press charges against the climber despite their earlier statement, Calleja said.