Maguindanao cops relieved

SHARIFF AGUAK, Maguindanao , Philippines  – The Philippine National Police (PNP) relieved yesterday all policemen assigned in Maguindanao to allay suspicions that they might influence the investigation of the massacre in the province.

The relief was ordered amid reports that a police raiding team found P120 million at the house of a member of the Ampatuan clan but did not declare the money.

The PNP denied that any cash was found at the home of Samera Nor Santiago in Shariff Aguak, mother-in-law of Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., principal suspect in the massacre. The PNP also said the relief of the provincial police was not related to the raid.

Senior Superintendent Bienvenido Garcia Latag, Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police director, told The STAR that except for Maguindanao police chief Senior Superintendent Alex Lineses, the more than 800 policemen assigned in the province were all relieved.

More than 300 men of Lineses were relieved earlier.

Members of the Regional Mobile Group (RMG) will take the place of the relieved policemen in anticipation of attacks by lawless elements.

“It (the relief) was done so as not to influence the operations and investigation and to take away doubts of the public,” Latag said.

The province is still awaiting the arrival of policemen from Regions 13, 9, 12 and 10 to replace Lineses’s men.

However, PNP spokesman Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina, in a separate interview at Camp Crame, said that the cycle of reassignments in the Maguindanao Provincial Police Office (PPO) has been completed as early as Jan. 8, 2010.

“Slowly, we have completed the cycle of reassignments in Maguindanao. This completes the relief as planned,” Espina said.

PNP chief Director General Jesus Verzosa ordered the relief of the entire Maguindanao PPO to pave the way for an impartial investigation on the Nov. 23 massacre that claimed the lives of 57 people, including 30 journalists.

‘Absurd’

The police, the military and local officials, many of whom were former allies of the Ampatuan clan, said insinuations that policeman and soldiers took some P120 million in cash hidden in a house they raided the other day as unfair and malicious.

“There were thousands of firearm ammunition found in the house, but there was no money as stated in a newspaper report. Occupants of the house were there, so was a lawyer of the Ampatuans. There were witnesses to that raid,” said a municipal councilor and former political ally of the Ampatuans.

Lineses said the report is absurd.

A close relative of former Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr. said the family have all transported their money out of Shariff Aguak using pickup trucks from Nov. 28 to 30, some four days after Ampatuan Jr. was turned over by his elders to Presidential Assistant for Mindanao Jesus Dureza.

“The first to take out money from Shariff Aguak was the ‘old man,’ the former governor, who doesn’t keep money in banks,” said an Ampatuan family member, who asked not to be specifically identified.

“Keeping money at the house of the mother-in-law of the detained Datu Unsay mayor defies logic. Who in his proper frame of mind would keep money there when the raids and searches were done almost everyday since the last week of November? The issue is whimsical,” he said.

Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the 6th ID will not dignify “speculative” report on the allegedly stolen money.

“Such an unfounded story is demoralizing, but it will not affect the performance of our soldiers helping the police restore normalcy in Shariff Aguak,” Ponce said.

According to the report, aside from high caliber weapons and ammunition, the raiders also found P120 million stored in cigarette boxes.

However, the report said that the raiders only declared the weapons and ammunition and allegedly divided the seized cash among themselves.

Dug up from the compound during the raid were several boxes of ammunition for M203 grenade launchers, M16 rifles, light machine guns, seven tripods for caliber 50 machine guns and 81 mm mortar tripods.

The report further stated that the cash seized from the compound of Samera Nor Santiago were loaded into police and military vehicles before members of the media and the public were allowed to enter the compound.

‘When there’s smoke…’

But Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo contended that the story about the recovered P120 million that was not declared could be true.

“As they say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The DOJ should look into these stories because there might be more to them than plain gossip,” said Ocampo, who is running for the Senate under the Nacionalista Party of Sen. Manny Villar.

“Journalists have not been allowed to cover the actual raids after Proclamation 1959 was lifted. If the Ampatuans saw it fit to store high-powered weapons in their mansions, it isn’t so far-fetched that they would also stow millions in cash as well,” he said.

Ocampo, a deputy minority leader, issued the statement following reports that police and military personnel didn’t just discover high-powered firearms and ammunition, but cash as well.

“These reports should be investigated because they are already spreading. The credibility of the findings of the PNP and the AFP operatives and other members of the raiding teams are already affected,” he said.

Authorities said they found only arsenal in the compound of Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr.’s mother-in-law in Shariff Aguak last Wednesday.

“P120 million is a large sum of money, and if money has indeed been found, these should be immediately transferred to the keeping of the Department of Justice (DOJ) for later disposition,” said Ocampo, a former spokesman of the left-wing National Democratic Front.

He also urged the DOJ to look into the reports and not to disregard the strong possibility that there are corrupt elements in the AFP and the Department of National Defense who may have assisted the Ampatuans in securing access to their various weapons and ammunition.

Based on reports, of the more than one million rounds of ammunition recovered from the Ampatuan compound, some 600,000 have markings of Armscor while the rest came from the arsenal of the DND.

“All this lends credence to previously made charges that the weapons being used by terrorist groups like the Abu Sayyaf and the various private armies of local warlords come from the AFP itself,” Ocampo said.

“Are the weapons and bullets being sold? The DOJ should not fail to look into this matter.” 

PNP: What millions?

But the PNP has officially denied the report saying the operation was transparent and was done in the presence of the Ampatuans’ lawyers and barangay officials.

“The claim is not true. There is no truth to the report,” said Espina.

Espina said Latag has forwarded his report to Camp Crame stating that the service of the search warrant and the search of the compound were done in the most orderly and transparent of manner in the presence of the Santiago household.

Espina, however, said that despite the report submitted to Camp Crame Verzosa still ordered Director Felizardo Serapio, head of the PNP’s Western Mindanao Directorate for Police Operations (DIPO) in Western Mindanao to “countercheck the rumor.”

DOJ extends submission of affidavit

Meanwhile, the DOJ has given Maguindanao officials and their supporters tagged in the alleged rebellion in the province a fourth and final chance to submit their respective defenses in its preliminary investigation.

In the third hearing on the rebellion case yesterday morning, the DOJ panel of fiscals granted the request of some of the 638 respondents for another extension of period for submission of counter–affidavits over various reasons.

The panel led by State Prosecutor Lamberto Fabros gave the remaining respondents until Jan. 29 to file the charges and submit their counter-affidavits before the case would be submitted for resolution.

Fabros said they allowed another extension of the deadline for submission of defense since not even half of all respondents were able to submit the required documents yesterday.

But the fiscal gave lawyers of respondents an ultimatum and told them that the new deadline would no longer be extended and the Maguindanao rebellion case would already be submitted for resolution afterwards.

Fabros said during the hearing that they could no longer afford to give another extension since the panel has to resolve the case in 60 days from date of filing last month. – With Mike Frialde, Edu Punay, John Unson, Delon Porcalla