Jed Mabilog is latest quad comm witness to score legal win

Former Iloilo mayor Jed Mabilog is the second of two persons to have won their legal case after giving their testimony to the House of Representatives quad committee — with both witnesses implicating former president Rodrigo Duterte.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. granted executive clemency to Mabilog in his administrative case, but the former mayor still faces a criminal trial for graft in a related case involving alleged financial interest in the towing services company that Iloilo had contracted under his watch as mayor.

Mabilog returned from asylum in the United States in September 2024, and in the same month faced the quad committee to say that he went on a self-imposed exile to prevent the Duterte government from falsely linking members of the political opposition to the illegal drug trade. Mabilog was himself branded by Duterte as a narcopolitician.

Also in September 2024, former police officer Jimmy Fortaleza was freed on the basis of a commuted sentence. Fortaleza, whose testimony was instrumental in linking Duterte to the killing of three Chinese drug lords in Davao Prison in 2016, had been convicted of three counts of murder and two counts of arbitrary detention, with reclusion perpetua as penalty.

After testifying in the committee, a Muntinlupa City court granted Fortaleza’s writ of habeas corpus petition — a petition questioning one’s detention — based on his having already served his full sentence if special time allowance for loyalty (STAL) is factored in. STAL, different from Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA), is another form of commutation of sentence based on voluntary surrender after leaving a facility during a calamity.

Police Colonel Hector Grijaldo alleged during a Senate hearing in 2024 that the mega-panel, particularly quad committee co-chairs Dan Fernandez and Bienvenido Abante, had pressured him into testifying against the former president. However, Fernandez and Abante denied the allegations, even going to the extent of testifying during a mega-panel’s hearing to explain their side.

Their testimonies

The testimonies of Mabilog and Fortaleza added to the evidence collected by the quad committee which eventually recommended filing charges of crimes against humanity against Duterte over the drug war that killed as many as 30,000 people, based on the tally of human rights groups.

Mabilog said he received a call from an unnamed police general who warned that if he returned to the country, he would “be forced to point fingers at an opposition senator and a former presidential candidate as drug lords.” Drilon was an opposition senator under Duterte, while Roxas was the Liberal Party’s standard bearer in 2016.

Although the testimony did not directly implicate Duterte, it added weight to allegations that the former chief executive used his drug war to go after his critics like former senator Leila de Lima, who was jailed for nearly seven years. The quad committee also recommended that Duterte be charged for conspiracy in the murder of the Chinese drug lords in a Davao jail.

Fortaleza said that his classmate, retired colonel Royina Garma, allegedly used his phone to communicate with the then-prison warden, Corrections Senior Superintendent Gerardo Padilla, in relation to the killing. It was Padilla who said that Duterte had called him to congratulate them after the killing of the Chinese drug lords.

Garma fled to the United States after her own quad committee testimony — the most explosive of them all — which alleged that Duterte designed a plan to reward police officers to kill drug suspects. Garma was arrested upon landing in California for a number of still undisclosed reasons, one of which was her having a canceled US visa. Her status in the US remains uncertain to this day.

Mabilog had the most direct benefit from Malacañang as a recipient of the exclusive executive clemency. Mabilog has been released on bail for graft. – Rappler.com