CA indicts 4 Armscor officials over illegal sale of ammunition

The Court of Appeals has approved the criminal indictment of four gun company executives for allegedly selling one million bullets that were later used in the infamous Maguindanao massacre in 2009.

The appeals court’s Special 17th Division dismissed for lack of merit the petition for certiorari filed by Victor Karunungan, Eduardo Santos, Lyn Demartin Justo and Melva Valdez Libao, all executives of the local gunmaker Arms Corporation of the Philippines (Armscor).

The court sustained the Department of Justice’s May 13, 2011, resolution to charge the four executives for the unlawful sale of ammunition under Pre-sidential Decree No. 1866.

“In our criminal justice system, the public prosecutor has the quasijudicial discretion to determine whether or not a criminal case should be filed in court,” read a portion of the ruling dated Oct. 27, which was made public only recently.

However, the court stressed that the denial of the petition did not mean that the Armscor officials were guilty of the allegations filed against them.

The four were charged after the police discovered that the ammunition used in the Maguindanao massacre on Nov. 23, 2009, that killed 58 people came from Armscor. —Marlon Ramos