PRICE OF FREEDOM | Reina Mae Nasino, seen here mourning 3-month-old River, is still incarcerated at the Manila City Jail, unable to pay the P420,000 bail for her temporary release.
(File photo by RICHARD A. REYES / Philippine Daily Inquirer)
MANILA, Philippines — Reina Mae Nasino, who gave birth in detention and lost her 3-month-old baby after they were separated in 2020, and two other activists remained behind bars a day after a Manila court granted them bail, her lawyer said on Tuesday.
The three detainees and their families couldn’t afford the price of temporary freedom, with the bail set at a total of P420,000 each for Nasino and Alma Moran, and P570,000 for Ram Carlo Bautista, according to Nasino’s lawyer Kathy Panguban.
“We will try to move for [bail] reduction, considering their [economic situation], plus the fact that the cases filed against them are fake,” she told the Inquirer in a phone interview.
“Tomorrow (Wednesday) we will file a motion to reduce bail. It’s going to be a joint motion [with Moran and Bautista],” she said.
‘Nakakalula’
Panguban, a human rights lawyer with the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, said the three were happy that the judge sided with them on the bail petition but worried about how they would come up with the money for the bond.
“The term they used was ‘nakakalula’ (dizzying). There are so many zeroes,” said the lawyer, who spoke with Nasino and Moran in a phone call to the female dormitory of the Manila City Jail.
Panguban said her clients understood that the court was only following bail bond guides in setting the amount “but we will still try to have the bail reduced, all circumstances considered.”
In a four-page ruling, Judge Paulino Gallegos of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 47 allowed the three to gain provisional liberty after finding that evidence for the charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives against them was “not strong.”
“Wherefore, premises considered, for failure of the prosecution to prove that the evidence of guilt against all accused are strong, the joint petition for bail filed by all accused is hereby granted,” the order read in part.
The court said the prosecution witnesses “failed to show that the circumstances they testified to are such that the inference of guilt naturally drawn therefrom is strong, clear and convincing,” the court said.
“The essential elements of the offenses, the surrounding circumstances, the subject of the offenses (corpus delicti), and the identity and participation of each of the accused were not shown to be strong,” it added.
Couldn’t identify accused
The court noted that the police officer and the barangay chair who were supposed to have documented the evidence against the accused could not identify them nor the firearms purportedly seized from them.
The three were among the activists arrested by the police in 2019 on the strength of so-called roving warrants, which rights groups said had been weaponized by the state against activists and dissenters. The Court of Appeals (CA) has since voided the search warrants that led to the arrest of Nasino, Moran and Bautista.
When she was arrested in Tondo in November 2019, Nasino had not realized she was pregnant. She gave birth to her baby, River, on July 1, 2020, prompting her to request the court either for temporary freedom so she could nurse the infant or to allow her newborn to stay inside the Manila jail with her.
But the petitions were not heeded by the court.
The case drew widespread attention after Nasino’s camp pleaded with the court to allow her to visit River after the baby was afflicted with diarrhea and fever, to no avail.
On Oct. 9, 2020, the 3-month-old died at the intensive care unit of the Philippine General Hospital.
Public anger over River’s death rose further during the funeral service after the police, according to activist groups, “hijacked” the procession by ordering the hearse to leave the mourners behind.
Voided search warrants
On Aug. 31, the CA ruled that the search warrants that resulted in the arrest of Nasino and her two companions failed to “meet the standards of a valid search warrant, and all evidence procured by virtue thereof are deemed inadmissible.”
The appellate court’s 12th Division noted a disparity in the three different addresses in the application of warrants which it said could have been clarified through an examination of the applicant and witnesses.
“With the erroneous addresses that were never clarified, there is but one logical conclusion, i.e., the applicant and his witnesses did not really have personal knowledge of the surrounding facts which would have justified the issuance of the subject search warrants,” the court ruled.
Panguban said the grant of bail for the three activists was “in consonance” with the CA decision.
“This is a welcome development [along with] the finding of the court that the evidence adduced by the prosecution is not strong,” she said.
Panguban said the charges against Nasino, Moran and Bautista “showed how our legal system is being used and abused to curb or to silence legitimate forms of dissent.”
“It is a weaponization of the law, and these events expose how much state forces are hell-bent in reducing the legitimacy of the advocacies espoused by activists and human rights defenders who only call for a better society for all, not just for few,” Panguban said.