Maria Ressa posts P100,000-bail
Credit to Author: CATHERINE A. MODESTO| Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2019 05:10:43 +0000
JOURNALIST Maria Ressa, chief executive officer and president of Rappler Inc., posted bail on Thursday at a Manila court after being held at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) headquarters overnight.
Ressa posted a P100,000-bail, which the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 46 had set.
Presiding Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa was in Las Piñas City, said her staff, so a judge from Branch 45 signed the bail on her behalf.
Ressa, whose arrest sparked outrage from her media colleagues, said this was the sixth time she bailed herself out.
“I will pay more bail than convicted criminals. I will pay more than Imelda Marcos,” she said in an interview with reporters.
JJ Disina, Ressa’s lawyer, said her legal counsels tried to post bail on Wednesday evening at the Pasay night court before it closed at 9 p.m. but the metropolitan judge refused to accept any application for bail, citing jurisdiction issues.
Disina, however, argued that under the Rules of Court, a metropolitan judge has the power to do so.
The NBI, which was directed to issue the arrest warrant to Ressa, served the court order after court hours, a move which was viewed by Ressa as “ridiculous” and critics as “harassment.”
In an interview, Ressa told reporters that if the government thought keeping her under its custody for a night would “intimidate” her, it was mistaken.
The arrest warrant, which stemmed from a revived complaint by businessman Wilfredo Keng over what he dubbed as a “malicious” story written by one of the Rappler researchers and posted on May 29, 2012, came from Manila RTC Branch 46, after the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) recommendation to indict Ressa. The same department submitted the recommendation to file charges on February 6.
Ressa was arrested about 5 p.m. at the Rappler office in Pasig City for cyber libel, a case which she described as “ridiculous,” an “abuse of power” and “weaponization of the law” because the violation she allegedly committed was still nonexistent at the time.
Keng accused Ressa of violating the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, which did not become law until about four months after the story — which claimed that Keng owned the sport utility vehicle that the late chief justice Renato Corona used during his impeachment trial — was published.
NBI previously dismissed Keng’s complaint for lack of basis but the bureau revived it a week later.
Ressa questioned the timing of the arrest, that she was not sent her own copy of the charge sheet, and that the case was thrown out by the NBI itself.
Ressa maintained that she and Rappler were not intimidated.
“No amount of legal cases, black propaganda, and lies can silence Filipino journalists who continue to hold the line,” she said.
“These legal acrobatics show how far the government will go to silence journalists, including the pettiness of forcing me to spend the night in jail,” she said.
The post Maria Ressa posts P100,000-bail appeared first on The Manila Times Online.