DoJ designates areas where GCTA convicts may surrender
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2019 03:41:23 +0000
THE Department of Justice (DoJ) designated areas where convicts who benefitted from the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) law may surrender, a DoJ official said on Friday.
Justice Undersecretary Mark Perete said the inmates or Persons Denied of Liberty (PDL) may go directly to the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) or to any of its prison farms or colonies or to the nearest police station or unit of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) where they could be registered and endorsed to BuCor for processing.
Perete’s advisory comes after President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the surrender in 15 days of thousands of convicts who were freed under the GCTA amid allegations of corruption stemming from the impending release of convicted rapist-murderer Antonio Sanchez, former mayor of Calauan, Laguna.
A witness testified before the Senate blue ribbon committee on Thursday night about the ongoing GCTA “sale” inside BuCor where officials would allegedly facilitate the early release of inmates for a fee.
READ: ‘GCTA for sale’
Sanchez was convicted of seven counts of reclusion perpetua, which is equivalent to life imprisonment for the 1993 rape-slay of Aileen Sarmenta and murder of friend Allan Gomez students of the University of the Philippines in Los Baños (UPLB).
The DoJ had ordered the suspension of the processing of the GCTA of PDLs pending results of a review of BuCor guidelines by a DoJ task force. JOMAR CANLAS