The lead defense counsel of the five men sued for last month’s fraternity-related violence on the University of the Philippines-Diliman campus is accusing the UP police of making false charges and planting evidence against his clients from Upsilon Sigma Phi.
Alex Avisado lashed at the UP police in a media interview Tuesday, a day after filing a motion asking the court to order a preliminary investigation (PI), particularly regarding the charges for frustrated murder and illegal possession of ammunition.
“There are issues that need to be clarified. Hopefully, (the PI) will give these children the opportunity to present evidence. We commiserate with the family of the victim, but (my clients) did not carry out the attack,” he said.
Avisado noted that, based on the police investigation, there were two assaults on the afternoon of June 18—“the Vitangcol incident, where the frustrated murder charge stems, and the Pangalangan incident.”
He was referring to the assaults on two of the four complainants from Alpha Sigma fraternity: Jesus Blas Vitangcol and Ernesto Luis Pangalangan. The others are Joevie dela Cruz and Mario Adrefanio Santos.
Avisado said his clients had nothing to do with the Vitangcol incident “because that involved a Mazda car” while his clients were in a Peugeot van when arrested shortly after the second incident involving Pangalangan.
“The bullets were planted,” the lawyer told reporters, referring to the three shotgun rounds that the police had marked as evidence along with other items purportedly found in the van, including lead pipes, a baseball bat, a ski mask, a smartphone and a bloodstained piece of tissue paper.
“Everyone knows, especially frat men, that a van is not a hit car. It’s a mother’s car,” Avisado said. “They (police) found one ski mask, but there are five people.”
“We are already preparing to file criminal and administrative charges against the UP police for falsely implicating the five students and for illegally planting evidence,” he said.
Jonathan Bantugan, one of the arresting officers and an investigator in the UP police, shrugged off Avisado’s move as something expected of a defense lawyer.
Bantugan recalled that when the arresting team marked the pieces of evidence in the suspects’ presence, they did not deny that those items belonged to them.
Now out on bail, suspects Cheran Cabrito, Elias Miles Villanueva, Rudolf Gene Karlo Neral, Rannie Mercado and Sean Rodriguez were scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday, but Quezon City Regional Trial Court-Branch 80 reset the proceedings to Aug. 11 as Judge Charito Gonzales went on sick leave.
“When their mug shots were published, their families expressed objections that they were being portrayed as ordinary criminals,” Avisado said. “Last time we checked, they’re presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
Asked for comment, Roel Pulido, a counsel for the Alpha Sigma members, noted that “things were disposed of during the car chase” that ended with the suspects’ arrest.
Noting that Vitangcol’s attackers wore ski masks, “the fact that there was one ski mask (in the Peugeot) is enough proof of conspiracy,” he said.
Pulido also wondered why the defense counsels did not ask for a preliminary investigation during the inquest. “If there were such objections, why did they not raise it during the inquest? Planted evidence? When? That’s all an afterthought.”
“Conspiracy is clear. The uniformity of the weapons (and) the modus operandi and targets, they are all consistent. They show it was a concerted attack against members of Alpha Sigma,” he said.
The prosecution is also set to ask the court to direct the Philippine National Police to examine the smartphone seized from the suspects. “We’re confident that they’re hiding something in that phone because they’ve been trying to grab that phone since Day One. They’ve been trying to demand that the police release that phone,” Pulido added.