Rape-slay convict Larrañaga en route to Spain - DOJ chief

(Updated 10:20 p.m.) The transfer of rape-slay convict Juan Francisco “Paco" Larrañaga to Spain pushed through on Tuesday despite the controversies hounding it. Larrañaga, 32, left the country at 11:45 a.m. aboard a KLM flight, according to Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera. Devanadera told GMANews.TV in a phone interview that they allowed the transfer to push through after receiving the order from the Cebu Regional Trial Court on Monday. "We waited for this order to be issued as a sign of respect to our courts. We allowed Larrañaga to go because the hold departure on him is no longer in effect," she said. She added that the Philippine government has already received last month a note verbale from the Spanish Embassy regarding the transfer. Devanadera also said Larrañaga was cleared to go to Spain after having paid P750,000 in civil damages to the kin of the victims. Larrañaga was sentenced to death by lethal injection on Feb. 3, 2004, but was saved by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s abolition of capital punishment on June 24, 2006. The then 19-year-old Larrañaga, along with six others, was found guilty of committing the crimes against sisters Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong on July 16, 1997 in Cebu City. Up to this day, Jacqueline's body is still missing. The convict is the son of former Basque pelotari Manuel Larrañaga and Margarita Gonzalez, granddaughter of the late President Sergio Osmeña Sr. and a cousin of former senator Sergio Osmeña III. [Watch video below to learn more about the Chiong sisters' murder case]
Larrañaga, who has a dual Filipino and Spanish citizenship, was allowed by the DOJ in early September to spend his remaining prison time at a detention facility in Spain after his counsel invoked the RP-Spain Transfer of Persons Agreement. The pact, which allows the physical transfer of Filipinos incarcerated in Spanish prison back to the Philippines, and vice versa, stemmed from the RP-Spain Treaty on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. The treaty was ratified by the both the Philippine and Spanish Senate in November 2007. Upon his arrival in Spain, Larrañaga would be brought directly to the prison facility of Centro Penitencario Madrid, 5 Soto del Real in Madrid to continue serving his sentence, Devanadera said. “The Spanish government further committed itself to the terms of the judgment of conviction, and that no justification whatsoever exists to revise the decision handed down by the Philippine judicial authorities," she said. Various anti-crime groups as well as the victims’ mother, Thelma Chiong, had earlier contested the transfer. They even accused President Arroyo of being lenient to wealthy convicts. Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, who sponsored a resolution for the ratification of the treaty, admitted that the DOJ had erred in handling Larrañaga’s case when it did not conduct any public hearing to give a chance to those who oppose the transfer to air their side. Santiago said that the DOJ, as an administering state, should issue implementing rules and regulations for the treaty, set the petition for transfer for public hearing, and make it necessary and compulsory for the family of the victims to be notified and file an opposition to the transfer. Mrs. Chiong said she was surprised to learn that Larrañaga has already left the country. “Kapag talaga biktima ka (When you are a victim), you really do not have the right to know," Chiong told GMANews.TV in a separate phone interview on Tuesday night. She also said that she was not notified by the DOJ about the “sudden" transfer of the rape-slay convict to Spain. “Nag-submit pa kami ng comment sa court order. Hindi namin alam na ganoon kabilis (We even submitted a comment on the court order. We did not know the transfer would be this sudden)," she said. She added that she wished the DOJ could have at least given her time to ask Larrañaga where the body of Jacqueline is. - GMANews.TV