The lawyer of Cezar Mancao said Tuesday he is keeping his fingers crossed that his client will be excluded from the list of witnesses in former police superintendent Michael Ray Aquino's extradition case in the United States.
 
Aquino is expected to use Mancao to prove his theory that the extradition request of the Philippine government against his client is politically motivated.

Arnedo Valera, Mancao's counsel, said he talked with Aquino's lawyer, Mark Berman, and tried to convince the lawyer to exclude Mancao from the witness list in Aquino's extradition hearing.

"In my conversation with Attorney Berman, I explained thoroughly why he should exclude Mancao from the witness list. The reason is that Mancao's declarations [about the murder case of publicist Salvador "Bubby" Dacer] is not tainted unlike [former police superintendent Glenn] Dumlao's," Valera said.

Unlike Dumlao, who executed three different affidavits, Mancao did not mention the word torture in his two affidavits, which were executed in 2007 and in Feb. 14, 2009.

“There are no indications of physical and mental duress when he [Mancao] executed his affidavits in 2007 and February 2009. If there are no [indications] of physical and mental duress, it should not be considered as a bar to [Aquino’s] extradition,” Valera said.

Valera said he told Berman that he would only need Dumlao since it was only Dumlao who claimed he was tortured by Philippine government authorities to implicate Sen. Panfilo Lacson in the murder of Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito, in November 2000.

Valera said Mancao has repeatedly assured him and his wife, Maricar, that he will stand by his February 2009 affidavit.

Valero confirmed that Mancao had implicated Lacson and former president Joseph Estrada in his affidavit, which the former police superintendent will authenticate upon his return to the country.

Further delay

The lawyer said the latest “orchestrated” move to prevent the extradition of the three former operatives of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) may effectively cause an undetermined period of delay in Mancao’s return to the Philippines.

He said the US court judge handling Aquino’s extradition case has not set a new date for a hearing.

Valera added that the Philippine government should immediately assemble a US legal team that would work with the US Attorney’s Office to block the motion for a writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum filed by Aquino’s laywer.

“It is to the best of their (government’s) interest to form a US legal team that will assist the US Attorneys Office,” he said.