GENERAL SANTOS CITY The regional trial court here has acquitted a former police officer accused of masterminding the assassination of broadcaster Ely Binoya.
Judge Oscar Noel on March 6 ordered the release from detention of Ephraim Englis, alias Toto. Englis walked out of the Sarangani provincial jail the next day.
Noel said prosecutors failed to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that Englis had ordered the June 2004 murder of Binoya .
Grace Binoya, wife of the slain broadcaster, said she was shocked by the decision.
"It’s another sad day for press freedom," said Jose Torres Jr., chair of the Commission for the Protection of Journalists of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.
Binoya, who was highly critical of Englis in his radio program, was riding a motorcycle on his way home to Malungon, Sarangani, on June 17, 2004 when he was ambushed by two gunmen. He died instantly.
A witness said he saw Alfonso Toquero, Englis’ driver, speeding away in a motorcycle with the gunman after the shooting. Other witnesses supported this testimony.
In his decision, Noel said Toquero might have been at the scene of the crime but Englis could not be charged just for being Toquero’s boss.
He said the testimonies of the six witnesses against Englis were purely circumstantial and that there was no direct evidence to pin him down.
Englis, a former policeman detailed in General Santos City, is chief of Barangay Datal Tampal in Malungon, Sarangani.
Binoya’s family and colleagues earlier claimed that some influential people were protecting Englis and Toquero.
As this developed, the lawyer of slain journalist Marlene Esperat criticized the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation for allegedly allowing Osmeña Montañer to leave the country despite a hold departure order against him.
Montañer, finance officer of the Department of Agriculture in Central Mindanao, was one of two suspected masterminds of the March 24, 2005 murder of Esperat in Tacurong City.
Lawyer Nena Santos told the Inquirer that she received information that Montañer and his family recently left on a pilgrimage to the Middle East without clearance from the court.
Montañer and Estrella Sabay, the DA’s regional accountant, were tagged as the alleged masterminds by four suspects in the killing of Esperat.
Rowie Barua, a former military intelligence operative who served as the close-in security escort of Sabay, executed an extra-judicial confession claiming that Montañer and Sabay paid him and the other suspects P120,000 to kill Esperat.
