HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Death Sentence on Mamburao 6 `Biased,’ Says Farmer's Wife

The decision of Judge Teresita Yadao of Branch 81, Quezon City Regional Trial Court on the case of the group of farmers now known as the “Mamburao 6” who were convicted – together with a former congressman – of killing the two sons of a local landlord in Mamburao, Occidental Mindoro was “biased,” says the wife of one of the convicted. The case, she said, rested mainly on accounts by witnesses who were either tortured or paid.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat

The decision of Judge Teresita Yadao of Branch 81, Quezon City Regional Trial Court on the case of the group of farmers now known as the “Mamburao 6” who were convicted – together with a former congressman – of killing the two sons of a local landlord in Mamburao, Occidental Mindoro was “biased,” says the wife of one of the convicted.

Manolito Matricio, Eduardo Hermoso, Mario Tobias, Josue Ungsod, Ruel Bautista, and Ruben Balaguer – who had been charged in 1998 of killing Michael and Paul Quintos, sons of Mamburao landlord Ricardo Quintos – were found guilty and meted out the death penalty in Yadao’s 80-page decision promulgated March 1. This, even as the Lucio de Guzman Command of the New People’s Army (NPA) had earlier admitted to the killing.

Meanwhile, Mamburao politician Jose Villarosa, who was charged together with the six farmers, has yet to be sentenced. He is a known political opponent of the victims’ father.  Villarosa is reputed to have beaten Quintos in all elections where they were pitted against each other.

“We cannot accept the decision,” said Cora Matricio, wife of Manolito Matricio, in an interview with Bulatlat. “We didn’t expect them to be sentenced to death because when you really look at it, you can’t find any real evidence against them.”

In an earlier interview with Bulatlat, lawyer Edre Olalia, counsel for three of the convicted including Matricio, said the farmers – who were locked in a land dispute against Quintos – ended up as “sacrificial lambs” in a battle between the Quintoses and Villarosa.

“They could not have been the killers of the Quintos brothers,” Olalia added. “Aside from the NPA’s public admission of the killing, there are also testimonies pointing to the perpetrators as all young men. All of the convicts are obviously middle-aged.”

Manolito Matricio, said his wife, was born in 1952. This makes him 45 years old at the time of the killing.

In a separate phone interview with Bulatlat, Danilo Ramos – chairman of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP or Philippine Peasant Movement) of which the six are all members – hit Yadao for relying too much on the testimony of Hermoso – who, he said, had been “tortured by the goons of Quintos.” Likewise, he scored Yadao for giving “too much credence” to the testimonies of six prosecution witnesses.  He described them as “paid hacks” of Quintos.

Matricio identified two of the prosecution witnesses – couple Nenita and Roel Bautista, who claimed to have witnessed the killings – as household helpers of the Quintos family. Both Olalia and Ramos described the other prosecution witnesses as connected to the Quintos family.

Nenita pointed to Manolito Matricio as one of the gunmen, while Roel identified Ungsod as among the killers.

Nenita and Roel could not have seen the incident, Matricio said, as they were not at the scene of the killing when it happened.

“Michael and Paul were killed while drinking in a friend’s house at the Mamburao town proper,” she said. “Quintos’ home is far from the town proper. We know Nenita and Roel to have been at home when the killing happened.”

Meanwhile, she related, when Hermoso was arrested by National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) operatives a few days after the killing, he was not turned over to the Philippine National Police (PNP) as should have been done but instead brought to Quintos’ house.

“By his own account, he was tortured there,” Matricio said. “They even intimidated him further by killing one of the local farmers – Balbin Fernandez – in front of him. That was how they exacted his testimony.”

“That testimony was obviously exacted under coercion and without the benefit of counsel,” Olalia said. “It should not have been used in court.”

“Without these testimonies, the case would collapse,” Ramos said. “This is all that the case rested mainly on.”

Ramos and Matricio said that they plan to contest Yadao’s decision before the Court of Appeals and, if need be, the Supreme Court.

“We will definitely fight this out,” Ramos said. “We will exhaust all legal, paralegal and meta-legal means to secure their freedom.”

Manolito Matricio has been detained for almost nine years. In all those years, his wife said, she alone had to fend for herself and their six children – the eldest of whom is now aged 25 while the youngest will be turning six this year. Three of them are still studying, she said.

She sells vegetables at the Mamburao public market and her earnings from these were what sustained her and their children through the nearly nine years that her husband was detained.

The way things are, she will still be fending for herself and their children on her own. Fighting the case out in the higher courts “could take years and years,” Olalia said. Bulatlat

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