Political detainee Eduardo Serrano, 62, was rushed to the Taguig General Hospital yesterday morning, December 16, after he experienced chest pains. It turned out Serrano had a myocardial infarction (heart attack). Private physicians of Serrano from the Health Alliance for Human Rights (HAHR) sought his transfer to the Heart Center of the Philippines where he is now confined at the Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. He is set to undergo angioplasty.
Political detainee Eduardo Serrano, 62, was rushed to the Taguig General Hospital yesterday morning, December 16, after he experienced chest pains. It turned out Serrano had a myocardial infarction (heart attack). Private physicians of Serrano from the Health Alliance for Human Rights (HAHR) sought his transfer to the Heart Center of the Philippines where he is now confined at the Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. He is set to undergo angioplasty.
Serrano, a peace consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) has been detained for more than 11 years now based on multiple criminal charges meant for a certain Rogelio Villanueva. He is among the 561 political detainees under the Aquino regime; and 19 NDFP consultants currently detained despite the immunity provided for by the GPH-NDFP Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG).
On November 26, the Quezon City Regional Trial Court-Branch 100 acquitted Serrano of the charges of multiple murder and multiple frustrated murder, crimes attributed to “Rogelio Villanueva". Judge Editha G. Mina-Aguda said the prosecution failed to prove Serrano’s guilt “beyond “People to prove the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt.” The court viewed the witnesses’ testimonies as “either imagined or trumped-up."
In October, the QC RTC Branch 98 Judge Marilou Runes-Tamang ruled that accused Rogelio Villanueva is not the same person as Eduardo Serrano; and Serrano should therefore be immediately released. The Branch 98’s October resolution said Serrano’s arrest and detention for 11 years is an “outright mockery of the basic human rights on due process of law which is enshrined in our Constitution."
Serrano faces two more similar trumped-up criminal charges of multiple frustrated murder at the QC RTC Branch 215 and kidnapping at Branch 97 which are up for resolution early next year. The cases lodged against Serrano are baseless as proven by the Court’s decisions on the two other criminal charges.
Serrano should be immediately released because the cases against him, aside from being fabricated and baseless, violate the JASIG. He is also among the elderly and ailing political prisoners whose release on humanitarian grounds is demanded. ###