Ex-DA exec tagged as mastermind in Esperat murder

A former official of the Department of Agriculture (DA) was tagged yesterday by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) as the brains behind the murder of journalist Marlene Garcia-Esperat in Tacurong City, Sultan Kudarat on Maundy Thursday.

NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco told reporters yesterday the killing of Esperat was planned by Sumail Sekkak, a former director at the DA in Central Mindanao, based on information from lawyer Boye Mama, NBI regional director in Central Mindanao.

Esperat, who had worked for the DA, filed graft and corruption charges against Sekkak before the Office of the Ombudsman after she had resigned from the agency, he added.

Wycoco did not say whether Sekkak and his wife, a former Department of Social Welfare and Development official who had been implicated in the graft charges, were now on the run from the law.

The Sekkak couple were dismissed from government service based on the charges filed by Esperat, he added.

Wycoco said a certain "Jake" — whom Central Mindanao police had identified as Randy Grecia — the lookout for the killers, had named Sekkak as the one who ordered the killing of Esperat.

"It appeared that Jake was being bothered by his conscience," he said.

Chief Superintendent Antonio Billones, Central Mindanao police commander, said his men arrested alleged gunman Jerry Cabayog, along with two other suspects, Rowie Burcia and Estanislao Bismanos, last Friday based on information from Grecia.

Affidavits were being executed by the four arrested suspects who had also identified the mastermind, whom police led by Chief Inspector Harrison Martinez are now tracking down in North Cotabato, he added.

Billones said four days after Esperat was killed, Grecia figured in a vehicular accident in his hometown in Asuncion, Davao del Norte and barangay officials caught him in possession of the caliber .45 pistol used in killing Esperat.

"The said .45 caliber pistol was positively identified as the handgun used to kill Esperat based on the ballistic test of the slugs and the empty shells recovered by the investigators at the crime scene," he said.

Billones said Grecia later betrayed his cohorts to Martinez whose wife is his relative.

Police under Superintendent Danilo Galapon filed murder charges against Cabayog, Burcia and Bismanos before the Sultan Kudarat regional trial court on Monday, Billones said.

A source said Burcia, reportedly a military intelligence agent, contracted Bismanos to kill Esperat for P120,000.

Bismanos, in turn, hired Cabayog to do the job, the source added.

On Sunday, two officials of Paris-based watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) arrived in Tacurong City to investigate the murder of Esperat.

Vincent Brossel, RSF Asia-Pacific Desk director, was to meet with Esperat’s family and media colleagues, as well as the police investigating the case.

"After the terrible killing of Miss Esperat, we believe it is important to come to visit her family, colleagues and monitor the investigation," he said.

On Sunday, Brossel and RSF news editor Jean-Francois Julliard handed $300 (or more than P16,000) to Valmie Garcia Mariveles, elder sister of Esperat at the Lantaw Marbel restaurant in General Santos City.

"Accept this as our assistance to the children of Marlene Garcia Esperat," Brossel said. "It may be small but it is coming from our hearts."

Julliard said the money given by the RSF was for the educational needs of Esperat’s four children.

"We hope it could help in their education," he said.

Mariveles thanked Julliard and Brossel for their generosity, saying, "thank you very much for the kindness of your group. We will not forget this. May God bless you all."

"We are really alarmed and worried about what is happening in the Philippines," said Julliard at a conference in Koronadal City, South Cotabato.

"We hope the continuing killings of journalists here will stop and their killers will be put in jail."

Another journalist could be killed if the murderers of Esperat are not immediately arrested, Julliard warned.

The two foreign journalists were in Sultan Kudarat, monitoring the investigation about the slaying of Esperat. They also talked to the Esperat children. They visited the graveyard of Esperat before they left for Koronadal City.

It was learned from Mariveles that she also received a check worth P5,000 from the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) and from several "kindhearted" persons who believed in Esperat’s anti-corruption crusade.

Mariveles said the money from NUJP would be spent for the "quest of justice" following Esperat’s death.

RSF defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world, as well as the public’s right to information in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It has nine national sections (in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), and representatives in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, Bangkok in Thailand, Istanbul in Turkey, Montreal in Canada, Moscow in Russia, Tokyo in Japan, and New York and Washington in the United States, and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.

Meanwhile, Mariveles called on authorities yesterday to speed up the investigation of her sister’s murder. — With reports from John Paul Jubelag, Ramil Bajo