KARAPATAN welcomed the acquittal by the Taguig City Regional Trial Court Branch 266 of four activists arrested since 2014 on trumped-up charges of kidnapping with murder and frustrated murder.
Ordered released were National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) consultants Renante Gamara and Tirso Alcantara, peasant organizer Dionisio Almonte, and construction workers Diony Borre and Raul Razo. Gamara, Borre and Razo were released form Metro Manila District Jail Annex 4 last night, August 14, 2025, while Almonte remains detained at the New Bilibid Prisons. Alcantara’s whereabouts are unknown.
The case involved the kidnapping and killing of a soldier and the frustrated killing of a “rebel returnee” in Mauban, Quezon in May 2007. A total of 37 individuals were named in the warrant, including a host of aliases.
The basis for including their names in the warrant of arrest were spurious. Gamara, who was arrested in March 2012 on the basis of this warrant issued as far back as May 2011, had his name included only 11 days before his arrest. The military claimed that he was the “Ka Mike” being referred to in the warrant. But according to Gamara, he had never set foot in Mauban, and was in Aklan with several other Bayan Muna personnel assessing the recent election when the alleged incident occurred. He was granted bail in 2016 to participate as a consultant in the formal peacetalks between the NDFP and Philippine government. He was rearrested in March 2019, when fabricated evidence of firearms and explosives were planted in the place where he was staying. For Gamara, freedom was an uphill battle because he had to hurdle two other trumped-up cases for illegal possession of firearms and explosives apart from this case in Mauban.
Diony Borre was farming in Sta. Cruz, Laguna, and like Gamara, he asserted that he had never been to Mauban, Quezon.
Peasant organizer Dionisio Almonte was arbitrarily arrested in January 2014 when he was undergoing treatment for a herniated disc, a spinal condition that causes chronic pain. Almonte was helping out in a relative’s bakery on the date of the alleged incident.
Raul Razo was a construction worker, based on his employment records, and on the date of the alleged incident, he was employed and was working in the field for Cacho Construction.
“Public prosecutors have this insidious practice of amending arrest orders by adding the names of targeted personalities, claiming without basis that the aliases on the warrant belong to them. The trumped up charges were also based on the perjured testimonies of a so-called rebel surrenderee named Erwin Rosales, whose claims were considered hearsay by the court,“ decried Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay.
KARAPATAN noted that Erwin Rosales was also presented as witness in the trumped up charges against security guard Rolly Panesa, who was tortured and detained for ten months, and Andrea Rosal, who was arrested when she was eight months pregnant.
“In cahoots with the prosecution, the military recycles its cabal of seemingly paid witnesses like Rosales. This tactic has been repeatedly used to persecute and arrest individuals from progressive groups and ordinary citizens. Unfortunately, this meant years in jail for Gamara, Borre, Razo and Almonte,” Palabay said.
“We are glad that the court saw through the lies and inconsistencies in the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses,” Palabay added, “and we hail the efforts of the defense lawyers in ferreting out the truth and securing the liberty of those who had been wrongfully accused and unjustly detained for so long.”