Judge lets Panamanian in rape case walk free

In a baffling twist to the case of a Panamanian man accused of raping a 19-year-old girl, a Makati City court has ordered the foreigner’s release after the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) issued a second certification declaring that he in fact was covered by diplomatic immunity.

Erick Bairnals Shcks, a technical officer of the Panama Maritime Authority, was released from police custody on Monday afternoon on the strength of an order from Judge Honorio Guanlao of Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 57.

Guanlao also directed the police to withdraw the rape case.

The head of the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group’s Women and Children’s Protection Division, Superintendent Emma Libunao, said her office complied with the court order and freed the 35-year-old Shcks around 4 p.m.

Libunao admitted that she was befuddled by the new certification from the DFA after it earlier issued a document saying that while the suspect enjoyed certain diplomatic privileges, immunity from a criminal suit was not among them.

“The first certification did not say outright that he had no diplomatic immunity … but the second certification spelled it out that he had diplomatic immunity,” Libunao told the Inquirer.

She said the CIDG had no choice but to comply with the Makati court’s order.

“As far as we are concerned, we did everything to pursue the case. We launched a hot pursuit against the suspect. We took him in custody. We filed the case. We were not remiss in our duties,” she said in a phone interview.

The alleged rape occurred at about 11 p.m. on April 23 when Shcks invited the girl over to his place after befriending her a few days earlier. The complainant told investigators that the suspect made her sniff marijuana, rendering her almost unconscious, and then raped her.

She reported the crime to the CIDG in the morning of April 24. Police later caught up with the suspect at a McDonald’s in Makati City.

Sounding bitter when reached on the phone Tuesday, the complainant said she had been informed of Shck’s release and called it “really irregular.”

“If I could not make it to the proceedings, at least my representative should have been informed so that we could have witnessed the release,” she said.

She said she had begun undergoing counseling and had been advised by her lawyer not make further comments in the media concerning the case.