DFA to cancel Ramona Bautista’s passport only if…

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Raul Hernandez, spokesperson of the Department of Foreign Affairs, on Tuesday said the issuance of an arrest warrant for Ma. Ramona “Mara” Bautista in connection with her brother Ramgen Bautista’s murder would prompt the DFA to cancel her passport or seek Interpol assistance to bring her back to the country.

On November 4, Ramona flew to Hong Kong and purportedly on to Turkey, evading investigation by police and prosecutors.

“One thing that will prompt us to cancel her passport is that if she’s a fugitive from justice and there’s a warrant for her arrest,” Hernandez said in an interview after a briefing in Malacañang.

Other conditions for the cancellation of Ramona’s passport would be her conviction by a court, or a finding that her passport had been fraudulently issued or tampered with, he said.

If and when a court issues a warrant for her arrest, the DFA may also facilitate any request by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the Interpol to help bring Ramona back to the country, Hernandez said.

“We can ask the Interpol [to help] in bringing her back to the Philippines with all the documentation ready. The No. 1 agency here is the DOJ. If they want to request the Interpol, they can come to us,” he said, confirming that there had been instances in the past where Interpol brought back Filipinos from abroad at the government’s request.

Legal assistance

“What is necessary is the court order and warrant of arrest,” he added.

Hernandez said the DFA could also ask her country of destination, say Turkey, to provide legal assistance in bringing her back to the country, and the Philippine government could reciprocate this by extending the same to Turkey.

“We can also request legal assistance on the basis of a court order,” he said, adding that it would be easier to do this if the Philippines had an extradition treaty with Turkey.

“The mechanism is already there,” Hernandez said.

He said there had so far been no instruction from Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario on the case.

NBI request

NBI Director Magtanggol Gatdula said he had sent a request to the Interpol office based in Ankara, Turkey, for any information it might have on Ramona.

Gatdula coursed the request of the NBI-Interpol through the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime addressed to the Ankara Interpol.

Included in the request for information is the confirmation of Ramona’s arrival in Istanbul, where she was said to have been headed, as well as her immigration status in Turkey.

“We can only request information they may have on her at this point,” Gatdula told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “We cannot go into shortcuts. We have to wait for the filing of a case in court and the issuance of an arrest warrant against her before we can ask for her inclusion in the ‘red notice’ list.”  Reports from TJ Burgonio and Jeannette I. Andrade