GEN. AVELINO I. RAZON, JR.

, Chief, Philippine National Police (PNP); Police Chief Superintendent

RAUL CASTAÑEDA, Chief, Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG); Police Senior
Superintendent LEONARDO A. ESPINA, Chief, Police Anti-Crime and Emergency Response
(PACER); and GEN. JOEL R. GOLTIAO, Regional Director of ARMM, PNP, Petitioners,
vs.
MARY JEAN B. TAGITIS, herein represented by ATTY. FELIPE P. ARCILLA, JR., Attorney-in-
Fact, Respondent.

G.R. No. 182498 December 3, 2009

FACTS:

Engr. Tagitis, a consultant for the World Bank and the Senior Honorary Counselor for the Islamic
Development Bank (IDB) Scholarship Programme, was last seen in Jolo, Sulu.

Kunnong and Muhammad Abdulnazeir N. Matli, a UP professor of Muslim studies and Tagitis’ fellow student
counselor at the IDB, reported Tagitis’ disappearance to the Jolo Police Station.

More than a month later, Mary B. Tagitis, Engr. Tagitis’s wife, file a Petition for the Writ of Amparo with the
Court of Appeals. The petition was directed against Lt. Gen. Alexander Yano, Commanding General,
Philippine Army; Gen. Avelino I. Razon, Chief, Philippine National Police (PNP); Gen. Edgardo M. Doromal,
Chief, Criminal Investigation and Detention Group (CIDG); Sr. Supt. Leonardo A. Espina, Chief, Police Anti-
Crime and Emergency Response; Gen. Joel Goltiao, Regional Director, ARMM-PNP; and Gen. Ruben
Rafael, Chief, Anti-Terror Task Force Comet [collectively referred to as petitioners].

On the same day the petition was filed, the CA immediately issued the Writ of Amparo and set for hearing.
On March 7, 2008, the CA issued its decision71 confirming that the disappearance of Tagitis was an
"enforced disappearance" under the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from
Enforced Disappearances.

Petitioners appealed the decision of the CA to the Supreme Court, disputing, among others, the sufficiency
of evidence supporting the conclusion that Tagitis was abducted.

ISSUE:

1. WON the evidence supporting the conclusion that Tagitis was abducted was sufficient.
2.WON the respondent discharged the burden of proving the allegations of the petition by substantial
evidence.

RULING: To both issues, YES.

Sections 13, 17 and 18 of the Amparo Rule define the nature of an Amparo proceeding and the degree and
burden of proof the parties to the case carry, as follows:

Section 13. Summary Hearing. The hearing on the petition shall be summary. However, the court, justice or
judge may call for a preliminary conference to simplify the issues and determine the possibility of obtaining
stipulations and admissions from the parties.

xxxx

Section 17. Burden of Proof and Standard of Diligence Required. – The parties shall establish their claims
by substantial evidence.

These characteristics – namely, of being summary and the use of substantial evidence as the required level
of proof (in contrast to the usual preponderance of evidence or proof beyond reasonable doubt in court
proceedings) – reveal the clear intent of the framers of the Amparo Rule to have the equivalent of an
administrative proceeding, albeit judicially conducted, in addressing Amparo situations.

Thus, in these proceedings, the Amparo petitioner needs only to properly comply with the substance and
form requirements of a Writ of Amparo petition, as discussed above, and prove the allegations by
substantial evidence. Once a rebuttable case has been proven, the respondents must then respond and
prove their defenses based on the standard of diligence required. The rebuttable case, of course, must
show that an enforced disappearance took place under circumstances showing a violation of the victim’s
constitutional rights to life, liberty or security, and the failure on the part of the investigating authorities to
appropriately respond.
The landmark case of Ang Tibay v. Court of Industrial Relations151 provided the Court its first opportunity to
define the substantial evidence required to arrive at a valid decision in administrative proceedings. To
directly quote Ang Tibay:

Substantial evidence is more than a mere scintilla. It means such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind
might accept as adequate to support a conclusion. [citations omitted] The statute provides that ‘the rules of
evidence prevailing in courts of law and equity shall not be controlling.’ The obvious purpose of this and
similar provisions is to free administrative boards from the compulsion of technical rules so that the mere
admission of matter which would be deemed incompetent in judicial proceedings would not invalidate the
administrative order. [citations omitted] But this assurance of a desirable flexibility in administrative
procedure does not go so far as to justify orders without a basis in evidence having rational probative force.
[Emphasis supplied]

In the seminal case of Velasquez Rodriguez, the IACHR took note of the realistic fact that enforced
disappearances could be proven only through circumstantial or indirect evidence or by logical inference;
otherwise, it was impossible to prove that an individual had been made to disappear. It held:

130. The practice of international and domestic courts shows that direct evidence, whether testimonial or
documentary, is not the only type of evidence that may be legitimately considered in reaching a decision.
Circumstantial evidence, indicia, and presumptions may be considered, so long as they lead to conclusions
consistent with the facts.

131. Circumstantial or presumptive evidence is especially important in allegations of disappearances,

because this type of repression is characterized by an attempt to suppress all information about the
kidnapping or the whereabouts and fate of the victim. [Emphasis supplied]

Velasquez stresses the lesson that flexibility is necessary under the unique circumstances that enforced
disappearance cases pose to the courts; to have an effective remedy, the standard of evidence must be
responsive to the evidentiary difficulties faced. On the one hand, we cannot be arbitrary in the admission
and appreciation of evidence, as arbitrariness entails violation of rights and cannot be used as an effective
counter-measure; we only compound the problem if a wrong is addressed by the commission of another
wrong. On the other hand, we cannot be very strict in our evidentiary rules and cannot consider evidence
the way we do in the usual criminal and civil cases; precisely, the proceedings before us are administrative
in nature where, as a rule, technical rules of evidence are not strictly observed. Thus, while we must follow
the substantial evidence rule, we must observe flexibility in considering the evidence we shall take into
account.

The fair and proper rule, to our mind, is to consider all the pieces of evidence adduced in their totality, and
to consider any evidence otherwise inadmissible under our usual rules to be admissible if it is consistent
with the admissible evidence adduced. In other words, we reduce our rules to the most basic test of reason
– i.e., to the relevance of the evidence to the issue at hand and its consistency with all other pieces of
adduced evidence. Thus, even hearsay evidence can be admitted if it satisfies this basic minimum test.

Assessment of the Evidence

The threshold question for our resolution is: was there an enforced disappearance within the meaning of
this term under the UN Declaration we have cited?

We find no direct evidence indicating how the victim actually disappeared. The direct evidence at hand only
shows that Tagitis went out of the ASY Pension House after depositing his room key with the hotel desk and
was never seen nor heard of again.

We likewise find no direct evidence showing that operatives of PNP CIDG Zamboanga abducted or arrested
Tagitis. If at all, only the respondent’s allegation that Tagistis was under CIDG Zamboanga custody stands
on record, but it is not supported by any other evidence, direct or circumstantial.

Strictly speaking, we are faced here with a classic case of hearsay evidence – i.e., evidence whose
probative value is not based on the personal knowledge of the witnesses (the respondent, Mrs. Talbin and
Col. Kasim himself) but on the knowledge of some other person not on the witness stand (the informant). 172

To say that this piece of evidence is incompetent and inadmissible evidence of what it substantively states
is to acknowledge – as the petitioners effectively suggest – that in the absence of any direct evidence, we
should simply dismiss the petition. To our mind, an immediate dismissal for this reason is no different from a
statement that the Amparo Rule – despite its terms – is ineffective, as it cannot allow for the special
evidentiary difficulties that are unavoidably present in Amparo situations, particularly in extrajudicial killings
and enforced disappearances. The Amparo Rule was not promulgated with this intent or with the intent to
make it a token gesture of concern for constitutional rights. It was promulgated to provide effective and
timely remedies, using and profiting from local and international experiences in extrajudicial killings and
enforced disappearances, as the situation may require. Consequently, we have no choice but to meet the
evidentiary difficulties inherent in enforced disappearances with the flexibility that these difficulties demand.

To give full meaning to our Constitution and the rights it protects, we hold that, as in Velasquez, we should
at least take a close look at the available evidence to determine the correct import of every piece of
evidence – even of those usually considered inadmissible under the general rules of evidence – taking into
account the surrounding circumstances and the test of reason that we can use as basic minimum
admissibility requirement. In the present case, we should at least determine whether the Kasim evidence
before us is relevant and meaningful to the disappearance of Tagistis and reasonably consistent with other
evidence in the case.

The Kasim evidence assumes critical materiality given the dearth of direct evidence on the above aspects of
the case, as it supplies the gaps that were never looked into and clarified by police investigation. It is the
evidence, too, that colors a simple missing person report into an enforced disappearance case, as it injects
the element of participation by agents of the State and thus brings into question how the State reacted to
the disappearance.

Thus, it was only the inquiry from Col. Kasim that yielded positive results. Col. Kasim’s story, however,
confirmed only the fact of his custodial investigation (and, impliedly, his arrest or abduction), without
identifying his abductor/s or the party holding him in custody. The more significant part of Col. Kasim’s story
is that the abduction came after Tagitis was seen talking with Omar Patik and a certain Santos of Bulacan, a
"Balik Islam" charged with terrorism. Mrs. Talbin mentioned, too, that Tagitis was being held at Talipapao,
Sulu. None of the police agencies participating in the investigation ever pursued these leads. Notably, Task
Force Tagitis to which this information was relayed did not appear to have lifted a finger to pursue these
aspects of the case.

We glean from all these pieces of evidence and developments a consistency in the government’s denial of
any complicity in the disappearance of Tagitis, disrupted only by the report made by Col. Kasim to the
respondent at Camp Katitipan. Even Col. Kasim, however, eventually denied that he ever made the
disclosure that Tagitis was under custodial investigation for complicity in terrorism. Another distinctive trait
that runs through these developments is the government’s dismissive approach to the disappearance,
starting from the initial response by the Jolo police to Kunnong’s initial reports of the disappearance, to the
responses made to the respondent when she herself reported and inquired about her husband’s
disappearance, and even at Task Force Tagitis itself.

CONCLUSIONS AND THE AMPARO REMEDY

Based on these considerations, we conclude that Col. Kasim’s disclosure, made in an unguarded moment,
unequivocally point to some government complicity in the disappearance. The consistent but unfounded
denials and the haphazard investigations cannot but point to this conclusion. For why would the government
and its officials engage in their chorus of concealment if the intent had not been to deny what they already
knew of the disappearance? Would not an in-depth and thorough investigation that at least credibly
determined the fate of Tagitis be a feather in the government’s cap under the circumstances of the
disappearance? From this perspective, the evidence and developments, particularly the Kasim evidence,
already establish a concrete case of enforced disappearance that the Amparo Rule covers. From the prism
of the UN Declaration, heretofore cited and quoted,173the evidence at hand and the developments in this
case confirm the fact of the enforced disappearance and government complicity, under a background of
consistent and unfounded government denials and haphazard handling. The disappearance as well
effectively placed Tagitis outside the protection of the law – a situation that will subsist unless this Court
acts.

WHEREFORE, premises considered, we DENY the petitioners’ petition for review on certiorari for lack of
merit, and AFFIRM the decision of the Court of Appeals dated March 7, 2008.