Probably not having any plans to let Senator Antonio Trillanes IV get off the hook, the camp of Presidential son and former Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte filed a motion, asking a Davao court to cancel the bail it granted to the lawmaker and have him arrested for libel charges.
In their motion released on Thursday, January 17, Duterte’s legal counsels, lawyers Rainier Madrid and Peter Danao, want the Davao Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 54 to issue an arrest warrant against the senator for going abroad “without prior leave of permission” from the court.
Trillanes arrived in the country last week from his Europe trip for speaking engagements. He is set to fly to the United States (US) from January 27 to February 10.
Claiming that the senator failed to get the court’s permission, Duterte’s lawyers argued that Trillanes is “guilty of flight” and that he “repudiated” the P96,000 bail he posted last December for his temporary liberty.
“Evidently guilty of flight, accused has flagrantly violated the conditions of his bail and this court’s custody over him,” the motion read.
To restore its jurisdiction over the lawmaker, the Davao court, according to the lawyers, should issue a warrant of arrest.
Judge Melinda Alconcel Dayanghirang of the Davao City RTC Branch 54 earlier junked the motion filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to issue a hold departure order (HDO) against Trillanes, stressing that the latter is not a “flight risk” when he surrendered himself by posting bail after the court issued four arrest warrants against him for libel.
Dayanghirang also noted that Trillanes’s international trips were supported by Senate President Vicente Sotto III and that these were “planned and scheduled” a long time even before the cases against him were filed.
[READ: Davao court denies gov’t plea to issue HDO vs. Trillanes]
Trillanes, on Tuesday, went to Duterte’s hometown to face his libel cases that stemmed from his accusation’s linking Duterte and his brother-in-law, Manases Carpio, to the P6.4 billion worth of shabu (crystal meth) shipment from China, and the alleged extortion of car-hailing companies like Uber.
The lawmaker, for his part, had said the libel charges lodged against him were just ways for the vice mayor to “harass” him.