Rolito Go asks DOJ to free him due to his poor health

Rolito Go. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Saying he has already served his maximum prison sentence and should get treatment for his health condition, convicted killer Rolito Go appealed to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a letter to release him from prison.

New Bilibid Prison (NBP) Superintendent Venancio Tesoro confirmed that Go personally wrote the letter, which was sent by his family to the DOJ.

“He said in his appeal that in his mind, [he believes] he has already served his maximum sentence in prison,” Tesoro told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a phone interview.

Go reportedly mentioned his colon cancer, which he has been battling for the last five years.

In a radio interview earlier last week, Go said he was hoping that his maximum sentence would end very soon so that he could be with his family this Christmas.

Like former Batangas Governor Antonio Leviste who was granted parole by the DOJ last week, Go is hoping he will also be released from prison.

The NBP superintendent said Go was out of prison on several occasions for his chemotherapy sessions.

In September 2012, the DOJ allowed Go to temporarily step out of prison for five to six days in a month to undergo treatment at the Chinese General Hospital in Manila.

Tesoro said Go was being escorted by three NBP personnel rotating in a three-shift per day basis during his treatments.

But just this week, the family of Go’s victim Eldon Maguan, the De La Salle student shot and killed by the high profile convict in a road rage encounter in Greenhills, San Juan, in 1991, made an appeal to President Aquino to look into the alleged “special privileges” enjoyed by Go for the past months.

Members of the Maguan family claimed that they have received reports that the powerful businessman has been able to go home to his Quezon City residence in-between hospital treatments.

Go, in an earlier interview, denied these allegations.

According to the NBP superintendent, Go, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993 by the Pasig Regional Trial Court, should be granted executive clemency—his last hope for freedom.

He has reportedly applied for executive clemency three times but these appeals were all denied by the Bureau of Pardons and Parole (BPP) for lack of merit.

Executive clemency can be granted by the President upon the recommendation of the BPP to grant convicts pardons, commute their sentences, or defer the implementation of their sentences.

Go’s series of “in-and-out prison adventures” started when he escaped from the Pasig jail in 1993, three days prior to his conviction.

He was arrested in 1996 in Pampanga and was jailed at the maximum security area of the NBP.

When he was transferred to the minimum security area in 2009, news started spreading that the high-profile criminal was able to go out of his detention cell to check on his businesses.

In August 2012, he claimed that he and his nephew were kidnapped but later released. He was recaptured hours after he was reported missing from his NBP cell.

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