IbArrA
Number of posts : 58
KARMA : 2
Registration date : 2009-03-06
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 Subject: Sentence reduced for Filipino spy suspect in US Wed Apr 01, 2009 3:29 pm |
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NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - A federal judge on Tuesday reduced the sentence of a former Philippine National Police officer who pleaded guilty to receiving classified U.S. government documents.
Michael Ray Aquino, 42, still faces a court battle over whether he will have to return to the Philippines to face murder charges.
He has been in prison since his arrest in 2005 for accepting the documents from a former U.S. Marine who once worked as an aide to Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney.
Prosecutors allege the documents were stolen as part of a plot to overthrow the government of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
He pleaded guilty in 2007 and was sentenced to 76 months in prison, but a federal appeals court ruled in February that the trial court misapplied sentencing guidelines, and it ordered a resentencing.
U.S. District Judge William Walls on Tuesday reduced the sentence to 46 months, or about the time Aquino has served, counting credit for good behavior.
He is being held at the Hudson County Correctional Center until his extradition case is resolved. He and two other men, also former Philippine National Police officers, are charged in connection with a double homicide in 2000.
Mark Berman, an attorney for Aquino, filed papers last week in an attempt to stop the two men, Cesar Ochoco Mancao and Glenn Galapon Dumlao, from being deported so that they might be called to testify at an extradition hearing.
Both men, who are being held in the U.S., have said Aquino ordered them to commit the two killings, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Berman has called the prosecution politically motivated.
The U.S. government opposes Aquino's attempt to confront the two men in court, and wrote in an 18-page response that extradition law doesn't give him the right to do so.
"Aquino will have every opportunity to make such defenses, but in a court of law in the Philippines, not here," the filing said.
Aquino was a senior officer in the National Police who fled to the United States to escape the murder charges in 2001, authorities say, and lived with his wife and son in New York City.
While in the U.S., Aquino received the classified documents from former FBI intelligence analyst Leandro Aragoncillo, who worked at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. Aragoncillo pleaded guilty to passing the documents to Aquino and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
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