Manila: Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa was freed on bail on Friday hours after she was arrested at the airport on the charge of violating the country’s Anti-Dummy Law.

Ressa, CEO of the news website “Rappler,” was arrested by two female police at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport at around 6:30am as she was about to board her flight to San Francisco, USA.

She was freed by the afternoon after posting a P90,000 (Dh6,304) bail on case filed before the Pasig Regional Trial Court Branch 265 judge Maria Theresa Abadilla.

Ressa is due to be arraigned on April 10.

The case, the second against Ressa in as many number of months, stems from charges filed against her by Securities and Exchange Commission for violating anti-dummy law. The Time Magazine 2018 Person of the Year awardee was alleged to have used proxies, through “Omidyar Network,” a foreign entity, to circumvent the constitutional restriction on 100 per cent ownership of mass media businesses in the Philippines.

Arrest warrants were also issued for Rappler managing editor Glenda Gloria and five other board members of the news website.

Last February, Ressa was arrested and had been named as a respondent in a cyber-libel case filed in 2012 against her by Filipino businessman Alfredo Keng. She was detained overnight at the NBI Cybecrime detention cell in Manila.

Ressa said her recent arrest was “harassment” by the present administration and described the latest development as a “travesty of justice.”

Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo denied that the palace has a hand in filing the cases against Ressa and that she was being harassed.

“She (Ressa) is complaining again that she is being harassed. All are equal before the law (yet) he wants to be treated differently. That cannot be done. All warrants of arrest issued by competent courts are to be served. Warrants of arrest are not issued unless the court judges determine that there is probable cause. Which means due process has been observed,” Panelo, who is also Chief Presidential Legal Counsel, said during his regular palace press briefing.

“We cannot complain that there is violation of press freedom. Press Freedom has nothing to do with the charges filed against her. She was charged of a crime and the determination of probable cause, hence warrant is necessary,” Panelo said.

For his part, Senator Francis Pangilinan, also a critic of the Duterte government said the apparent harassment carried out on Ressa “sends a chilling message to other media outlets.”

“This administration will indeed pull out all the stops to silence critics and suppress the truth. Ressa’s arrest may be a simple bailable case at hand, but just how law enforcers were carrying it out sends a chilling message to other media outlets and to the public in general of portent of things to come if one gets in the way of the administration,” the opposition Senator said.