Manila (Fides Service) – “We welcome with joy and hope the Supreme Court’s decision. The judges hold the lives of two men in their hands. We have full trust in the magistrates who must decide whether to re-open the case. There is new evidence and nothing proves the guilt of the two men”. Father Robert Olaguer, chaplain of Manila National Prison said this to Fides following the Supreme Court’s decision to suspend the execution of Roberto Lara and Roderick Likayan, scheduled for 30 January. The men charged with kidnapping and extortion are at the National Penitentiary on death row awaiting execution.
Father Olaguer spoke with Fides a few hours after he had visited Likayan and Lara: “Both men are believers: they are praying, they are hoping and today they are smiling. I encouraged them and prayed with them urging them not to be worried but to have confidence in the justice of God. Now we have another month. We will keep praying and making appeals until we touch everybody’s conscience”.
Lara and Likayan were to be executed by lethal injection. On January 26 the Supreme Court accepted the appeal made by Persida Rueda-Acosta, head of the Public Attorney’s Office, who called for a revision of the case with new evidence and testimony to prove the innocence of the accused.
The Coalition Against the Death Penalty, an association of Catholic and non religious bodies, welcomed the decision to postpone the execution taken by the judges of the Supreme Court as an act of justice and of service to truth.
Through its members at local and national level, the Church continues to work for the abolition of capital punishment in the Philippines. (PA) (Fides Service 29/1/2004 lines 28 words 278)