JEDDAH, 28 July 2007 — Three of seven Filipinos charged in the infamous Jeddah “chop-chop” killings last year have been sentenced to die, but negotiations are going on to save their lives, a visiting Philippine foreign affairs official said yesterday.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in Manila also announced the convictions, in which a Jeddah court found Edison Gonzales, his brother Roland, and Eduardo Arcilla guilty of killing and mutilating the bodies of fellow Filipinos Reno Lumbang, Jeremias Bucod, and Dante Rivero in April 2006.
All the death row convicts and their victims are from Pampanga in the northern Philippines, the province of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
According to a report of the Philippine Consulate General to Manila, the rest of the accused — Victor Alfonso, Omar Basilio, Efren Dimahon and Joel Sinambang — were each sentenced to receive 1,000 lashes and a prison term of eight years.
“The verdict was handed down, I think, on Tuesday,” Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis told Arab News in a phone interview from Riyadh yesterday. He explained, however, that the court decision is still not final.
“The case will still be appealed,” he said, adding that while the victims were Filipinos, the DFA has to assist the convicts since they are also Philippine nationals.
In Manila, department spokesman Claro Cristobal likewise said the Philippine government is committed to appeal the case of the convicted OFWs.
“The president and the secretary of foreign affairs have given clear instructions to assist the Filipino nationals involved in the case. And because their victims are also Filipinos, we must also extend assistance to the families of the victims,” he said.
Tagged as the worst crime ever committed by and against Filipinos in the Kingdom, the “chop-chop” killings shook the Filipino community in Jeddah.
More than a hundred people were reportedly taken in for questioning by the police, some of them detained for days, after body parts were found scattered in some places in the Industrial City.
At the height of the “chop-chop” issue last year, there were fears that six people who were reported missing were killed.
Police, however, said some of the suspects admitted to abducting and killing only three. One of the accused led police to where they dumped some of the body parts. DNA samples from recovered body parts were later positively matched with samples taken from relatives of the victims.
Arab News gathered later that three of those reported missing, including two workers of Sarawat Superstore in Jeddah International Market, left for the Philippines surreptitiously when word of the death of Reno Lumbang came out.
The killings were found to be an offshoot of a rivalry between two gambling syndicates operating in the Western Region, one led by Lumbang and the other by Edison Gonzales.
An official of the consulate’s labor office (POLO) has said the leaders of the gambling syndicates did not come here to the Kingdom to work like the tens of thousands of OFWs but to promote gambling.
In Manila, DFA spokesman Cristobal was asked if the government will help raise the so-called blood money to save the three convicts from death. He replied that as Saudi laws apply, the mechanism that allows for their forgiveness and subsequent release also applies.
But he also cited a report by Consul General Pendosina Lomondot from Jeddah, which explained that the mechanism, called the tanazul, will not be invoked until the court decision becomes “final and executory,” that is, until it reaches the Saudi Supreme Court. As in the Philippine judicial system, the Saudi courts have two more layers of appeal for the convicted — its Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, he said.
Cristobal said the affirmation of the lower court’s decision by the Saudi Court of Appeals may come in eight to 10 months. He said this will then be automatically reviewed by the Saudi Court of Cassation, which may decide in another eight to 10 months.
He said that given this process, the Philippine government may have to consider “tanazul” in mid-2009.
Undersecretary Seguis said that negotiations involving the families of the victims were necessary if any diyah or blood money payment were to be made. “It’s between the families. We will assist in getting the aggrieved families to forgive the accused and accept the blood money,” he said. (With a report by the Inquirer News Service)
