Manila courts allow Nasino, 2 others to post bail

A Manila court on Monday allowed Reina Mae Nasino—the rights activist who lost her three-month-old daughter in 2020 while in detention—and two other political detainees to post bail.

Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 47 granted the petition for bail filed by Nasino, Ram Carlo Bautista, and Alma Moran, saying the prosecution failed to produce strong evidence against them.

“Wherefore, premises considered, for failure of the prosecution to prove that the evidence of guilt against all accused are strong, the joint petition for bail filed by all accused is hereby granted,” the court said.

Nasino and Moran were ordered to post bail amounting to around P420,000 each while Bautista was ordered to post bail amounting to at least P570,000.

The development came months after the three urged the Manila RTC to dismiss the cases filed against them in September after the Court of Appeals (CA) voided the search warrants issued against Bautista, which was used as the basis for their arrest in 2019. The CA also declared inadmissible all evidence procured against them.

In 2019, authorities arrested the activists at the office of progressive organization Bayan in Tondo for supposedly violating Republic Act (RA) 10591 or the Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act and RA 9516 on the unlawful possession of firearms.

Nasino, pregnant at the time of her arrest, gave birth to an underweight and jaundiced baby, named River, in jail in July 2020 while she was asking the Supreme Court for humanitarian release amid the pandemic due to her condition.

After giving birth, she asked a Manila court to either allow her and her sickly baby to stay in the hospital or in the prison nursery until the child was 12 months old.

The court rejected her plea, citing the city jail's lack of resources to accommodate her and her child.

When River—cared for by relatives and deprived of her mother's company—was hospitalized with pneumonia at two months old, Nasino asked the court if she could visit her in hospital. The baby died a month later before the court could act on the request.

At both the baby's wake and burial, Nasino was handcuffed and under heavy guard during the short visits she was allowed on both occasions. She was not permitted to embrace her baby's coffin at the funeral.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) denied that the treatment of Nasino at River's wake and burial was "overkill." — BM, GMA Integrated News