Prosecutor junks Angelo Reyes' libel case vs Rabusa

The Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office has junked the libel complaint filed against former military budget officer Lt. Col. George Rabusa by the late Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes due to insufficiency of evidence. In a three-page resolution, investigating prosecutor Ralph Michael Cataquiz explained that a close reading of the transcript of Rabusa’s Jan. 31, 2010 TV interview “evinces the lack of probable cause in this case." In the said interview, Rabusa accused Reyes and his wife Teresita of benefiting from the corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines. It was Rabusa who, during a Senate hearing in the Senate last January, accused Reyes of receiving millions of pesos worth of “pabaon" (send-off money) from the military organization when he retired from service as AFP chief. Reyes, who denied the accusation, committed suicide in early February, days after he filed the libel complaint against Rabusa. Cataquiz went on with the investigation despite a letter from Mrs. Reyes last March telling him that she no longer wants to pursue the case. In the same letter, Mrs. Reyes informed Cataquiz that her family had terminated the services of her husband’s lawyer, Bonifacio Alentajan, effective March 29, 2011. But on April 4, 2011, Cataquiz received a letter from Alentajan stating that the evidence of the crime were duly submitted and not contradicted by the respondent, thus probable cause was duly established. In dismissing the case, Cataquiz noted that the complainant did not submit a video copy of the television news program where respondent’s alleged libelous statements appeared. “Instead, complainant submitted a transcript of the purported television interview. The transcript appears to have been prepared by complainant himself and is ‘quoted verbatim’ in the body of his sworn statement," the resolution read. “Since only the transcript was submitted and not a video copy of the alleged interview, a fair and objective assessment of the interview cannot be made to determine the presence of the elements of libel," it added. — KBK, GMA News