Mindanaotoday.com | Oro court convicts 5 cops for kidnapping
By: Uriel Quilinguing
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Five officers of the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office, who were accused more than six years ago for kidnapping a former overseas Filipino worker, have been found guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, by a Regional Trial Court in this city.
Presiding Judge Ana Candida N. Casiño of RTC Branch 17, in a decision penned Monday, March 20, 2023, sentenced each accused the penalty of “reclusion perpetua” (life imprisonment).
Docketed under Criminal Case No. CR-ORD-2016-1201, those convicted for kidnapping are former Police Senior Inspector Ereneo Ramirez, Senior Police Officer 2 Jojo Lim, Police Senior Officer 2 Alaindelon Tacubao, Police Officer 3 Alejandro Ubanan, and Police Officer 2 Sangkala Hussein II.
The Court also ordered them to pay jointly and severally the heirs of the victim a combined amount of P350 thousand as civil indemnity and as moral, exemplary, and temperate damages.
Two others, who were at the crime scene and tagged as police assets, were acquitted on reasonable doubt.
For the same reason, the Court acquitted them from the crime of carnapping, under Criminal Case No. CR-ORD-2017- 1314.
The victim was Enrique Fernandez III, an OFW who was seized on October 26, 2016 in Upper Balulang, this city, by armed men in civilian clothes, later identified as police personnel assigned at the COCPO’s Crime Against Persons and Property Unit.
Fernandez was missing since then.
“The evidence against the accused was strong,” said lawyer Armando Kho, counsel of the Fernandez family, in an interview by Radio Mindanao Network-Cagayan de Oro after the verdict was handed down.
Kho was referring to the video footage from a 10-minute surveillance camera that was secured by the National Bureau of Investigation, thus all the five were positively identified as COCPO personnel. It had gone viral after it was shared by netizens.
This, aside from a first-hand account from a kid who witnessed the entire incident, the lawyer of the victim’s family said. (MT)
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