General Admission
Napoles case may take forever?
By Al S. Mendoza
A LAWYER said it would take “1,000 years” to resolve the Napoles case.
“The wheels of justice roll so slowly that the Napoles case will take 1,000 years to resolve,” said Harry Roque, who teaches law at the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
He means that in our lifetime, we will never see the end of the Napoles case.
Roque, a prosecution lawyer in the infamous Maguindanao Massacre, fumes that almost five years after the massacre on Nov. 23, 2009, trial has yet to begin.
The case has dragged on and on that it has riled the families of victims crying for justice and has added to the list of big-time troubles plaguing the Aquino administration.
The prime suspects in the Maguindanao Massacre, like the Ampatuans, are behind bars like the prime suspect in the alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam, Janet Lim-Napoles.
But unlike the Ampatuans, Napoles is not being detained for her having allegedly masterminded the P10-B scam.
She is being detailed in Fort Sto. Domingo, Santa Rosa City in Laguna for alleged illegal detention.
The case was filed by Benhur Luy, Napoles’s former chief of staff.
Luy, Napoles’s cousin no less, said Napoles detained him when Napoles got wind of Luy’s plan to reveal the alleged P10-B scam to authorities.
Luy’s alleged detention ended after nearly three months when agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) “rescued him.”
Luy is now under the witness protection program under NBI custody after revealing Napoles had allegedly masterminded the scam.
When the NBI was about to serve an arrest warrant against Napoles for illegal detention, Napoles went into hiding.
But after 14 days, Napoles resurfaced and surrendered, not to the NBI but to President Aquino—at the Palace no less.
With the date of the case of illegal detention against Napoles yet to be tabled by the court, the plunder charges against Napoles have yet to be brought to court.
But already, Lorna Kapunan, the famous, high-profile lawyer of Napoles, is doggedly pursuing perjury charges against Luy, one of 10 reported whistle-blowers against Napoles.
When the preliminary hearing on this will start, nobody knows as yet.
With so many people involved in this alleged pork barrel scam, including allegedly 5 senators and 23 congressmen, the case/s may drag on for years—if not forever.
Kapunan has said her client does not hold any single document of the alleged scam being linked to Napoles, but “Luy claims he holds all the documents allegedly implicating Ms Napoles” on the scam.
“One who possesses the properties owns,” said Kapunan, referring to Luy. “He admitted the signatures on those documents he holds are signatures he had forged.”
How about that for starters? And Kapunan is not yet in court, my golly.
Some lawyers. They can put Houdini the escape artist to shame.
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