ManilaMailDC.Net - New Jersey court rejects bail for Ray Aquino

New Jersey court rejects bail for Ray Aquino

WASHINGTON - Saying Michael Ray Aquino was a flight risk, US District Judge William Walls denied bail for the former deputy director of the Philippine National Police held in a New Jersey federal facility since Sept. 10 on espionage charges.
The judge also gave the prosecution 60 more days to build its case against Aquino before trial.
Aquino’s court-appointed lawyer Mark Berman had requested bail pending trial but Judge Walls during a one-hour status conference denied it on several basis including Aquino’s training as an intelligence officer and pending murder charges against him in the Philippines said Michael Drewniak, spokesman of the US Attorney’s Office in New Jersey.
Judge Walls considered Aquino a flight risk also citing his lack of ties in the United States and an outstanding deportation order against him due to his lapsed visa, Drewniak told the Manila Mail.
Lead prosecutor Assistant US Attorney Karl Buch had requested a 90-day continuance to give the FBI, CIA and other government agencies more time to review classified materials that may have been compromised in the espionage case.
Rather than grant Buch’s 90-day request, Judge Walls ordered prosecution and defense attorneys to return to court on March 14 for another status conference to determine the next step in what the prosecution has described as a “complex case.”
Depending on what happens in the intervening period, the prosecution could ask for a further continuance or report it is ready to proceed with the trial, Drewniak said.
He has also previously requested that several people from the Philippines not named in the indictment be deposed as defense witnesses but this was not taken up in Wednesday’s hearing, the spokesman said.
Aquino is accused of conspiring with a former FBI intelligence analyst, Leandro Aragoncillo, in the passing of classified information to political opposition leaders in the Philippines.
Aquino was indicted on Oct. 6 with one count of conspiracy which carries a jail sentence of up to five years, and one count of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign official, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Aragoncillo, a US citizen, faces a third count for downloading classified US government information and transferring it to his private computer. This offense carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
The classified documents Aquino and Aragoncillo are accused of transmitting reportedly contained analyses of the Philippine political situation conducted by the US government.
Aquino, a prot_g_ of Sen. Panfilo Lacson, an opposition leader closely allied with deposed President Joseph Estrada, is being held in solitary confinement at the Passaic county jail in Paterson, New Jersey, indicating the seriousness of the charges against him.
Accompanied by his wife and son, Aquino left Manila for the United States in 2001 after charges were filed against him in connection with for the murder of PR man Bubby Dacer.
He studied nursing in New York and passed the board exam in 2004. His wife is a caregiver.
MANILA – The man charged with passing classified information to Filipino officials may have done so out of deep love for his homeland and should be treated leniently, former President Joseph Estrada said.
Washington is investigating FBI analyst Leandro Aragoncillo and has invoked its Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Manila to get dossiers on a number of Filipinos who might have received information from him, according to a Philippine investigator.
“His only fault was for being overly concerned about his relatives and fellow Filipinos,” said Estrada, who acknowledged receiving information from Aragoncillo by e-mail last year. “Even if he was already at the FBI and a naturalized American, he still has a Filipino heart,” Estrada told The Associated Press by telephone.
Estrada, toppled in massive street protests in 2001 and held under house arrest on charges of plunder, said he did not think that Aragoncillo passed on classified information for money. When they met in Manila while he was still in power, Aragoncillo never asked for anything, Estrada said. “The only thing I gave him were two dinners, one in Malacanang (the presidential palace) and another in a hospital, where I was confined. Nothing else,” he said.
Aragoncillo, 47, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1991. He served 21 years in the Marines and worked at the White House on the security detail for Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney between 1999 and 2002 before joining the FBI as a civilian intelligence analyst at Fort Monmouth, N.J.
He is not charged with espionage, which carries a maximum penalty of capital punishment, as plea discussions continue. Instead, he’s charged in court papers with conspiring to reveal government secrets, acting as a foreign agent and improperly using FBI computers. Those charges carry a maximum of 25 years.
While the scandal has shocked the FBI and the White House, Estrada said he did not regard it as espionage because the materials sent were political developments widely reported in local newspapers, such as popularity surveys and unflattering accusations against top politicians. “I don’t believe the guy sent those materials in bad faith,” Estrada said. “What’s spying there when there was nothing new in the downloaded materials? Everybody knew the contents. ... I read them in newspapers.”
Aragoncillo at one point urged him not to divulge to others information that he was passing on, Estrada said, but added that it appeared to have been out of his penchant for privacy and not to conceal anything criminal.
Asked if U.S. authorities should treat Aragoncillo with leniency, Estrada replied: “I believe so. If I can only tell U.S. authorities, the guy has nothing.”
At the height of the scandal last year, a Philippine newspaper ran a series of reports based on what it said were copies of some of the alleged confidential files Aragoncillo purportedly obtained illegally and shared with others -mostly critical assessments of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has faced vote-rigging and corruption allegations, Vice President Noli de Castro and Estrada himself.

By Jose Katigbak