President Rodrigo Duterte supported the 14-day jail time for suspected terrorists, even in the absence of a case because he believes it is not unconstitutional.
Section 29 of the Anti-Terrorism Bill allows the police and military to imprison – without a judicial warrant of arrest or case – the “suspected” terrorists, perpetrators, conspirators, and conspirators to commit terrorism for up to 14 days, which can extend to 10 more days.
According to Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, the Revised Penal Code allows the 36-hour jail time of terrorists even without a trial to prevent escape and the destruction of evidence.
Roque said Duterte, as a fiscal trial, had no issue with pre-detention.
In the President’s opinion, the 14-day provision is not unconstitutional because it does not change the Constitution’s rule.
Earlier, the President said his legal team is still studying the controversial bill.
The provision includes authorizing the government to wiretap: “A law enforcement officer may, upon written order of the Court of Appeals secretly wiretap, overhear, and listen to, intercept, screen, read, surveil and record or collect, with the use of any mode form, kind of device any communications, conversation, discussion, data, information, messages in whatever form, kind or nature, spoken or written words between members of a judicially declared and outlawed terrorist organization.”
The anti-terror bill also abolished the provision of the Human Security Act of 2007, which provides P500,000 damages per day to any terrorist suspect who is found to be innocent.
“[T]errorism, as defined in this Section 6, shall not include advocacy, protest, dissent, stoppage of work, industrial or mass action, and other similar exercises of civil and political rights, which are not intended to cause death or serious physical harm to a person, to endanger a person’s life, or to create a serious risk to public safety,” the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 also said.
Meanwhile, Leyte 4th District Representative Lucy Torres-Gomez said Wednesday that the fear of abuse is not a “valid reason” to reject the opposed Anti-Terror bill.
“The fear that a bill can be abused, or the law can be abused is not unfounded. We have seen how laws have been abused in the years, not just under the reign of President [Rodrigo] Duterte but even the reigns of other presidents,” Lucy Torres-Gomez said.