New warrant sought in journalist Marlene Esperat’s slay

The camp of slain Mindanao journalist Marlene Esperat has asked a Makati court to issue alias warrants for the arrest of alleged masterminds Osmeña Montaner and Estrella Sabay, both former ranking officials of the Department of Agriculture.

According to the motion filed in Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 138 by Prima Jesusa Quinsayas, private prosecutor representing the Esperat family, there was no more legal obstacle to the arrest of the accused and the resumption of criminal proceedings against them.

Quinsayas said that criminal proceedings in the case were suspended after the Court of Appeals in Cagayan de Oro City granted the prayer of both accused for a writ of preliminary injunction in November 2009.

But last Aug. 21, the same appellate court threw out the petition for certiorari [review by a higher court of a lower court’s decision] and prohibition filed by the accused.

Quinsayas explained that they were asking for alias warrants because the original warrants of arrest issued earlier by a Cebu City judge had not been served.

However, both Montaner, Department of Agriculture Region XII finance officer, and Sabay, his chief accountant, have opposed the Esperat camp’s motion, saying that they had appealed the court ruling denying their petition for certiorari and prohibition.

They said that in denying their petition, the appellate court did not revoke the writ of preliminary injunction it had earlier issued.

They added that the CA’s decision was not yet final on the account of the pendency of their motion for reconsideration.

“Thus, the issuance of alias warrants is still not warranted, considering that the said decision has not yet been ’finally resolved’ and the writ of preliminary injunction not ‘revoked’,” both of the accused said in the opposition they filed in court.

On March 24, 2005, Maundy Thursday, gunmen barged into Esperat’s home in Tacurong City, Sultan Kudarat, and fatally shot her as she was having dinner with her daughters.

Esperat, then the DA’s Ombudsman in central Mindanao, had filed graft charges against former Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap and other ranking department officials in connection with an alleged P432-million fertilizer scam in 2003. The case was investigated by the Senate and led to former Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-Joc” Bolante being implicated.

Esperat had also filed graft charges against other ranking DA officials for, among other things, the alleged smuggling of P23-million worth of chicken quarters from the United States in 2004. Montaner and Sabay were among the DA officials charged.

Esperat later left the government and became a crusading journalist at Central Mindanao’s Midland Review.

Montaner and Sabay had sought a reprieve from the Court of Appeals after the Regional Trial Court of Tacurong City in April 2009 dismissed for lack of merit their motion to quash the charges against them for the killing of Esperat.

The case is now being handled by Makati RTC Branch 138 after the Supreme Court ordered its transfer from Tacurong City in September 2009.

In October 2008, approximately two years after the gunman and his accomplices in the killing were convicted, the prosecutors refiled murder charges against Montaner and Sabay in the Tacurong City RTC. The case was earlier filed in the Cebu City RTC but the Court of Appeals in Cebu City granted Montaner’s and Sabay’s petition prohibiting the RTC judge from hearing the case.