Makati RTC Branch 150 permits Trillanes to go overseas

FILE: Senator Antonio “Sonny” Trillanes IV (Photo: Senate of the Philippines/Facebook)

The Makati Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 150 temporarily lifted the travel ban against Senator Antonio “Sonny” Trillanes IV, allowing him to go out of the country once he posted a P200,000 travel bond.

Judge Elmo Alameda granted on Thursday, November 29, Trillanes’s motion asking for the court’s decision to allow him travel to the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom (UK) from December 11 to January 12, 2019 to “perform his official duties” and to attend various activities in those countries, including delivering a lecture about “Democracy and the Rule of Law in the Philippines” at the Universiteit Van Amsterdam.

He also asked permission to go to the United States (US) from January 27 to February 10, 2019 to meet with officials of various groups in California, Washington D.C., and Maryland.

“As shown by his past actions, he voluntarily surrendered and posted bail in this case immediately upon service of the warrant for his arrest and that he has always returned to this country in those instances where he was permitted by the courts to travel abroad,” Alameda wrote in his decision.

“Foremost is that, he is not a flight risk,” he added.

The court then required the opposition senator to post a travel bond worth P200,000.

“Taking therefore into account the previous conduct demonstrated by Senator Trillanes and the purpose of his travel coupled with the fact that he is not considered a flight risk, the court is persuaded to grant his request to travel abroad upon posting of travel bond in the amount of P200,000,” the decision read.

Upon Trillanes’s return, the court also ordered him to file a manifestation attaching a copy of the page of his passport, along with the stamp mark of the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation indicating the date of his departure and return to the Philippines.

Alameda, who handled Trillanes’s rebellion case over the 2007 Manila Peninsula siege, previously ordered the senator’s arrest and barred him from leaving the country.

However, the former mutineer was allowed to post a P200,000 bail for his temporary liberty, to which the latter immediately complied with.