Binay calls for prayers for doomed Filipino in Saudi

Vice President Jejomar Binay. FILE PHOTO

Vice President Jejomar Binay on Tuesday asked for prayers for an overseas Filipino worker sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for murder and robbery, after the OFW’s family failed to meet Wednesday’s deadline to pay P55 million in blood money to the victim’s heirs.

Binay, also the presidential adviser on OFW affairs, said Joselito Zapanta’s mother and sister left for Riyadh on Friday carrying a letter he had written to the Saudi government appealing for an extension of the deadline.

“Let us pray for our compatriot Joselito Zapanta. I wish that, through our prayers, we can prolong his life,” said Binay in a statement.

The family of Saleh Imam Ibrahim, the Sudanese landlord Zapanta was convicted of murdering and robbing, had asked for five million Saudi rials (around P55 million) to be paid on Nov. 14 or the sentence of beheading would be carried out.

Zapanta’s family, with government help, has so far raised only around 400,000 rials, Binay said.

In a press briefing, Assistant Secretary Raul Hernandez, the Department of Foreign Affairs’ spokesperson, said the government was exploring all avenues to extend the deadline.

“[Wednesday] is the deadline…but we have asked help from Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as well as the Sudanese government to extend that deadline so we can come up with the blood money,” Hernandez said.

A migrants rights’ group, meanwhile, has renewed its appeal to the government to send a high-level team to Saudi Arabia to try and save the life of Zapanta.

“We have been repeatedly suggesting to the Philippine government that a high-level team of diplomats be sent to Saudi Arabia to once and for all look into the individual cases and status of OFWs on death row. That way, they can come up with legal actions and strategies to concretize their efforts at saving the lives of OFWs on death row,” said John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator.

Monterona said the family of the Sudanese man was standing by its decision to let his beheading push through.

“From the beginning, the Sudanese family was not willing to accept blood money. This was confirmed to me by no less than Zapanta when we talked in a discreet phone call made to me in mid-2011,” he said.

Binay had earlier written the Saudi king  seeking a stay of execution for Zapanta.

“I join our President, Benigno Aquino III, in seeking your intercession in the deferment of the sentence imposed on a Filipino national, Joselito Lidasan Zapanta,” Binay said in the letter.

“The deferment, which we seek on compassionate grounds, would allow the family of Mr. Zapanta to raise the blood money of SR5 million being asked by the heirs of his victim Salah Imam Ibrahim,” the Vice President added.

Zapanta, a father of two, left for Riyadh on Oct. 14, 2007, to work as a tile setter. He was not paid his salary for six months by his employer so he looked for another job.

In June 2009, Zapanta’s family received a call from one of his friends in Riyadh who told them the 32-year-old native of Mexico, Pampanga, was in jail for killing his landlord.

According to the friend, the landlord on May 26, 2009, brutally beat Zapanta after the latter refused to pay his apartment rent since it was not yet due, Monterona said.

Zapanta killed Ibrahim with a hammer. He took the victim’s mobile phone and 3,000 rials (about P32,000), giving the phone to fellow OFW Karen Manalo who has served her sentence for her part in the crime.

Zapanta admitted to the crime but said it was an accident.