After 35 years of seeking justice, three suspects involved in killing labor leader Rolando “Ka Lando” Olalia and his aide Leonor Alay-ay were found guilty beyond reasonable doubt on October 12, 2021.
Antipolo Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 97 presiding Judge Marie Claire Victoria Sordan convicted and sentenced former Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) members and former sergeants Dennis Jabatan, Desiderio Perez and Fernando Casanova of reclusion perpetua or 40 years imprisonment without eligibility of parole.
They were also ordered to pay PHP2.2 million in damages and indemnity.
“All monetary awards shall earn interest at the legal rate of six percent per annum from the date of finality of this decision until fully paid,” the court ordered.
This would not be paid out pending appeal of the conviction.
“Today is a day of celebration and of restored belief in our judicial system. It is also a day of loss and a day of remembrance in honor of two brave and honorable men we were privileged to know as father and as a friend,” said Atty. Rolando Rico Olalia, son of Ka Lando.
‘Glacial pace of justice’
“For the longest time, our family has been languishing in a pit of despair brought on by the glacial pace of justice,” said Rolando Rico and thanked groups who helped and sympathized with their family throughout the case.
On the night of November 12, 1986, Ka Lando and Alay-ay were abducted by armed assailants along Julia Vargas Avenue in Pasig City. They were found lifeless the next day in Rizal, their bodies reportedly mutilated beyond recognition.
The assailants were ranking officers and all part of RAM, known right-wing elements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), led by former senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Gregorio Honasan. RAM joined the EDSA People Power that toppled the martial rule of the late Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., a sign of military breaking away from the late dictator. They then participated in a series of failed coup attempts against the fledgling government of President Corazon Aquino.
In its report to then-president Aquino in 1986, the National Bureau of Investigation, said the killings were a prelude to the staging of “God Save the Queen,” a coup plot by RAM “to rid the Aquino Cabinet of left-leaning members.” Honasan has denied this, saying the “God Save the Queen” plot which allegedly involved the abduction and murder of Ka Lando and Alay-ay was not among those hatched by the RAM.
In May 1998, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed two separate cases of murder against 13 RAM members in the Antipolo Regional Trial Court. This was only months after the DOJ revived the case. Ex-Sgt. Medardo Barretto came forward, admitting to participating to and implicating several RAM members in the surveillance, abduction, torture, and kidnapping of Olalia and Alay-ay. He and ex-Sgt. Eduardo Bueno turned into state witnesses, fearing for their lives after some of the 28 participants to the murder were ordered killed or reportedly died under mysterious circumstances.
Charged were retired Colonels Eduardo Kapunan and Col. Tirso Legaspi, ex-Capt. Ricardo Dicon, ex-Sergeants Gene Paris, Edgardo Sumido and Jabatan, ex-Staff Sergeants Freddie Sumagaysay and Jose Bacera, ex-Cpl. Cirilo Almario, Casanova, ex-Sergeants Perez and Filomeno Maligaya and Gilberto Galicia.
Kapunan and Legaspi sought immunity from prosecution, arguing that Proclamation No. 347 granted by former President Fidel Ramos to rebel soldiers “extinguished their criminal liability.”
Only in May 2009, the Supreme Court took 21 years to rule that the amnesty did not include the Olalia-Alay-ay double murder case and that the trial against the 13 may proceed. Another year passed before the case was raffled to a judge.
In February 2012, the Antipolo City RTC issued arrest warrants against the 13 suspects.
Perez surrendered on July 24, 2012. With only one of 13 suspects in custody, a pre-trial was held only 26 years after the gruesome murders.
Barreto named Kapunan mastermind in the double murder. In the first time he testified in court after he surrendered to the Philippine Army, Kapunan admitted he ordered the surveillance of Ka Lando. However, in 2016, the same judge acquitted Kapunan, granting his demurrer to evidence, meaning the prosecution’s evidence against him were deemed insufficient and did not need to present his defense.
In 2017, Kapunan was designated by President Rodrigo Duterte as Ambassador to Myanmar, one of the many political appointees of the president that then outnumbered career diplomats. Kapunan is currently serving as Ambassador to Germany.
And this year, just three out of the 13 suspects were proclaimed guilty. Nine others are still at large and 35 years on the run.
Families of the victims and various groups continue their call for justice.
“Only when the [nine at large]—and all the other unnamed principals— who have managed to evade the long arm of the law have been found and brought before the courts to be held accountable for their crimes, will justice be finally served,” said Rolando Rico.
He also named Kapunan as the 13th person implicated in the murder “who was positively identified by the prosecution’s witnesses as deeply involved in the crime” but Kapunan “continues to maintain his innocence.”
“While we are glad that some resolution has come to this case, we are far from satisfied because not everyone involved in brutally killing Ka Lando and Ka Leonor are still free,” said Kilusang
National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers President Atty. Edre Olalia said there are “very important messages and lessons” in this case.
“One, superiors and handlers of subordinates will eventually abandon them when the chips are down. Two, grounded tenacity to seek justice despite overwhelming odds and dangers can yield positive results. Finally, law and justice will in time catch up with perpetrators later if not sooner,” said Olalia, who is also Ka Lando’s cousin and private prosecutor for the case.
