THE PHILIPPINES. FAMILY OF DEATH ROW SPANIARD PLEADS FOR RETRIAL

for the last eight years Paco Larrañaga has been in a Philippine jail, and on February 4, 2004 the Supreme Court sentenced him to death by lethal injection for kidnapping and murdering two young sisters on the island of Cebu. Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong were abducted and killed on 16 July, 1997. The 27-year-old, who had pleaded innocent throughout that time, released a video recorded in his Manila prison cell. In the video, which lasted less than 60 seconds, Larrañaga said: "I have been in jail in the Philippines for eight years. I am innocent. I was sentenced to death for a crime I did not commit."
Larrañaga's family and lawyers were asking for a new trial, saying that the original one was riddled with irregularities. According to the video, Larrañaga was in Manila on the day of the crime, some 300km from Cebu.
"Some 35 schoolmates and teachers who were with me that day were not allowed to testify. I wasn't allowed to testify either, they didn't want to listen to me," he said in the video. "Please listen to me. I feel very bad about what happened to the Chiong family, but I have nothing to do with what happened to their daughters. Please don't abandon me." The video comes amidst an international campaign to get Larrañaga's case reopened. On May 12, his defense team hoped that the Supreme Court would give the green light to a new trial, while Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero asked the president of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to help get the case reviewed. Lawyers' associations in Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao who reviewed the case agreed that Larrañaga's trial lacked the minimum legal guarantees. From the island of Cebu, his mother, Margot, said that she has not lost hope of seeing her son walk free, "because I am sure that he was not there on the day of the crime."