MANILA, Philippines – A Laguna court on Wednesday, June 29, cleared human rights worker Nimfa Lanzanas of illegal possession of firearms and explosives more than a year after her arrest during the Bloody Sunday raids that left nine activists dead in Calabarzon.

Calamba Regional Trial Court Branch 37 granted the demurrer to evidence filed in May 2022 by Lanzanas, one of the six individuals arrested during military and police operations in Laguna, Rizal, and Batangas on March 7, 2021.

Lanzanas was released on Wednesday night, according to the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers.

In the decision, Judge Caesar Buenagua said the prosecution failed to prove that the accused was guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and that the police officers failed to follow “strict procedures laid down by the rules in the implementation of the search warrant.”

Lanzanas, then a 61-year-old grandmother, was accused of keeping three guns and a grenade inside her home. But the court said the operation and the seized evidence were tainted by irregularities, including the absence of a primary witness as authorities searched the house.

The court also “finds it precarious” that two police officers stated in their testimonies that Lanzanas was with them despite simultaneously conducting search in different parts of the house.

“As it appears, contrary to the testimonies of the two police officers who conducted the search, accused was nowhere with them,” the court said in the decision.

The police said that the operations were meant to serve warrants, but progressive groups called these an execution and part of Duterte’s crackdown on dissent.

The dismissal of the charge against Lanzanas continues the streak of activists cleared by the courts after they were arrested during the service of search warrants. By Rappler’s tally, Lanzanas is the 26th activist freed by the courts in the past year alone.

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A long-time human rights worker, Lanzanas worked as auditor of Gabriela Southern Tagalog starting in 2009.

Prior to her arrest, Lanzanas was heavily involved in assisting political prisoners, most especially her son Edward, an activist who was arrested in 2014. She was a paralegal for human rights group Karapatan, as well as a member of political prisoners’ rights group Kapatid.

The Bloody Sunday operations came two days after President Rodrigo Duterte ordered state forces to “kill” and “finish off” communist rebels, a common rhetoric that has led to policies and violence on the ground over the past six years.

Calabarzon police chief Brigadier General Felipe Natividad told Rappler the deadly operations in March 2021 were done in compliance with Duterte’s anti-communist insurgency agenda in the Philippines.

In January 2022, the National Bureau of Investigation filed murder complaints against 17 cops over the deaths of activists Ariel Evangelista and Ana Mariz “Chai” Lemita-Evangelista, two of the nine slain during the operations. The police who implemented the search warrant against the couple in Nasugbu, Batangas had a “deliberate intent to kill,” according to the complaint.

Outgoing Justice Secretary Menarda Guevarra, on June 9, said the Department of Justice’s AO 35 panel will do its “best efforts [to resolve what is ripe for resolution]” regarding the Bloody Sunday killings. The panel was specifically created to focus on extrajudicial killings and politically-motivated harassment.

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At least 427 incidents of killings of activists, human rights defenders, and grassroot organizers were recorded by rights group Karapatan from July 2016 to December 2021. There were also least 537 recorded cases of frustrated killings.

Meanwhile, at least 1,161 activists have been arrested and detained in the same period. – with reports from Lian Buan and Jairo Bolledo/Rappler.com