Davao journalist apologizes to Nograles, remains jailed

MANILA, Philippines - The lawyer of jailed Davao broadcaster Alexander Adonis on Tuesday said his client should have already been set free two months ago, if he were to take House Speaker Prospero Nograles’s word for it. In a forum organized by the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists in Quezon City , lawyer Harry Roque said Adonis should have been released last October given the fact that he had already apologized to complainant Nograles. This, still aside from the fact that the Department of Justice Board of Paroles and Pardon had granted him parole in connection to his first libel case - in which he was convicted – and allowed him to post bail in his second libel case. Adonis was convicted for his first libel charge, after reading from a tabloid article – during his commentaries in his program – claiming that Nograles was caught with his pants down while running away from the husband of his alleged mistress inside a Manila hotel. During Tuesday’s forum, Roque said a “teary-eyed" House Speaker reportedly came up to him in a past public engagement, where the two were invited as guest speakers, and told him how the “Burlesque King scandal" had disparaged his reputation and had back lashed on his family. Before ending their conversation, Nograles apparently said the only way Adonis could be freed was if the broadcaster would apologize to him. “The Speaker told me he [Adonis] will never be released unless he publicly apologizes for what he had said in his program… He told me that unless he apologizes, no amount of petition that we file anywhere will effect his release," Roque said. On October 27, Adonis made an apology to Nograles during one of the hearings of his case in Davao . “Surprisingly, the media there [in Davao ] did not cover that hearing," Roque noted. Adonis allegedly said he made the apology because he could no longer endure the “misery" that was being inflicted upon him at the penal farm. Still, barely two months after his apology, Adonis has yet to be declared a free man. “For some reason, some parties to this agreement did not deliver on their promise and he continues to be behind bars," Roque lamented. GMANews.TV tried reaching Nograles by phone but one of his staff said the House Speaker was out of the country. GMANews.TV also asked Nograles through text to comment on Roque’s statements but has yet to receive any reply as of this posting. Background Adonis was convicted with finality regarding Nograles’s libel charge and subsequently jailed at the Davao Prisons and Penal Farm Colony and served around seven to eight months when we filed the communication. Roque’s camp belatedly discovered that the Justice department’s Board of Pardons and Parole had already granted Adonis parole as early as December 2007. Under the Indeterminate Sentence Law, a convict who has served the minimum term for his conviction can be set free on parole. The parole however was not personally communicated to Adonis because the jail warden at the jail facility “did not bother to share this information with Alex Adonis," Roque said. To make things worse for Adonis, Jeanette Leuterio the woman identified in the Burlesque King scandal - revived the case and filed a separate libel complaint against Adonis in May 2008. And under the law, a convict can be disqualified from getting a parole if he has another pending case in court. “The motivation behind the reactivation of the second case was because he would have already served the minimum term for his conviction," Roque claimed. “It was clear that the revival was intended to keep him behind bars for the full term of his sentence, which is three years," he added. In May, the Davao Regional Trial Court Branch 14, hearing Adonis’s second libel case, issued a release order for the jailed broadcaster after he posted a P5,000 bail. However, the Davao penal farm’s director, Venancio Tesoro, refused to release Adonis, insisting that the DOJ had erred when it granted parole for Adonis. Only hopes Roque said they are currently pinning their hopes for Adonis’s release on the two more recourses they have taken several months ago. First, Adonis’s lawyers and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines and the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus before the Supreme Court in May. A second measure that Adonis’s camp had resorted to is by sending in mid-2008 a communication to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), appealing Adonis’s conviction and stressing that criminal libel is a violation of freedom of expression. In response, the UNHRC gave the Philippine government to submit a formal reply within six months after receiving Roque’s communication or this December. The Supreme Court should have issued a resolution on their petition last November. “Why we have not heard anything from the Supreme Court in connection with the petition for habeas corpus… only the court can answer," Roque said. As for the UNHRC, Roque lamented that the body “takes forever" to issue a decision in connection to a petition brought to it. To illustrate, he said it took the UNHRC almost four years to draw up a decision for a Philippine-related matter. - Mark Merueñas, GMANews.TV