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On the run for more than a calendar year from court-ordered arrest warrants, Osmeña Montañer and Estrella Sabay, the alleged masterminds in the 2005 murder of Philippine investigative journalist Marlene Garcia-Esperat, at left, are now out of hiding and back at work as senior Department of Agriculture finance officials, according to recent reports in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
The two suspects
returned to their positions soon after a December 3 Cagayan de Oro City
The Philippine
government had earlier formed and deployed a dedicated “tracker team” to locate
and arrest Montañer and Sabay, but ultimately
failed to secure the politically connected suspects. A senior
Philippine police official charged with overseeing the tracker team told CPJ in
July 2009 that he had received intelligence that both suspects had fled to an
undisclosed location in neighboring
The injunction against
Montañer's and Sabay's arrests and their return to high-level official
positions in the government represents a clear setback to achieving swift
justice in the landmark media killing case. Both have steadfastly maintained
their innocence; Montaner recently told a Daily Inquirer reporter
without elaborating that he and Sabay were “fall guys” in the case.
But with such clear-cut
evidence gathered against them, many still hope that their convictions will set
an important legal precedent towards breaking the cycle of impunity that has
allowed so many media killings to go unpunished across the
Montañer and Sabay were
implicated as the Esperat murder's masterminds in testimony given by ex-military
intelligence official Rowie Barua in May 2006 during the trial of the three
assassins, each of whom was sentenced
to lengthy jail terms for their roles in the targeted assassination. Barua
claimed during his testimony that Montañer and Sabay had hired him to plan and
orchestrate Esperat's killing to silence her critical news reporting on Department
of Agriculture corruption.
The two suspects have since argued
through their lawyers that because they were acquitted as suspects in the
earlier trial against the gunmen the new proceedings represent a violation of
Philippine laws that protect against being tried for the same crime twice.
Their legal defense has also challenged the legitimacy of appointed courts and
judges, a strategy that resulted in the temporary stay order against their
earlier issued arrest warrants.
Observers and advocates
believe the drawn-out legal maneuvering has been purposefully designed by the
defendants' legal team to break the will of witnesses and finances of the
plaintiffs—though so far there is no indication that the prosecution plans to
relent in their pursuit of justice.
But until the masterminds of
the Esperat murder are successfully brought to justice, the message sent to
other suspects in media killings—including the perpetrators of the Maguindanao
massacre—is that justice can be delayed and that persistent legal maneuvering
represents a potential way out.
(Reporting from
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