'I'm tired of being used'

"I don't want to be used by politicians again."

This was what Norberto Manero Jr. told reporters when he was asked yesterday why he wanted to move from North Cotabato to an agricultural training compound in Quezon City.

"I want to start a new life with my family," he said in halting Tagalog.

Manero, a former member of a civilian anti-insurgency unit in Mindanao, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for killing Italian priest Tullio Favali two years earlier. A life term means a maximum of 40 years in prison.

His sentence was commuted to 24 years on Feb. 6, 1998 by then President Fidel Ramos, based on a recommendation by the Board of Pardons and Parole.

On Dec. 28 last year, President Estrada granted Manero conditional pardon, paving the way for his release from the maximum security compound of the New Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa City.

Manero went back to his hometown in Tulunan, North Cotabato, but requested the pardons board that he be transferred to the Agriculture Training Institute compound in Quezon City, where a relative has provided him with a mo-dest apartment unit.

He told a press conference at the Parole and Probation Administration in Quezon City that he wants to lead a new life, never again to be exploited by powerful politicians in Mindanao. He did not elaborate.

Gregorio Bacolod, administrator of the Parole and Probation Administration, said Manero must meet his parole officer twice a month until Oct. 8, 2005 -- when the period of his "character observation" ends.

Manero said he would strictly follow the terms and conditions of his parole as he denied reports that he would go after the witnesses in the Favali murder.

Bacolod said Manero would be whisked to jail the moment he starts harassing those who had seen him kill the priest.

While Manero had already expressed remorse for his acts, Muslims and Christians in Cotabato City have started gathering signatures for Malacañang to revoke the presidential pardon.

According to radio station dxND, those who are gathering signatures do not want to be identified for fear of reprisal.

But Ustadz Khalil Mansoor, a teacher in an Arabic school in North Cotabato, went out in the open and said Muslim religious leaders in his area would submit a separate appeal to the President to order Manero's detention.

The religious leaders believe that Manero was responsible for the death of at least 300 Muslims at the height of the Moro rebellion in the 1970s.

"It is better for him to stay in Manila meanwhile. His presence in Mindanao, particularly in areas where he once ruled with terror, will just keep on reminding us of the grotesque images of the Muslim-Christian conflict of the 1970s," said Mansoor. -- With John Unson, Rey Arquiza