MANILA, Philippines - The investigation on the murder of international racing champion Ferdinand “Enzo” Pastor took a surprising though not uncommon twist yesterday.
Police Officer 2 Edgar Angel, the self-confessed gunman who tagged Pastor’s widow Dalia and her alleged lover Domingo de Guzman III as brains of the killing, appeared at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to recant his earlier statement.
In a three-page counter-affidavit, Angel said he executed his extra-judicial confession under “duress.”
“The extra-judicial confession was well-scripted. All the details on where victim Ferdinand ‘Enzo’ Pastor passed by before he was killed were manufactured by the police and did not come from me. The police are the scriptwriter and they just made me the protagonist in their script,” he claimed.
He alleged that the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit (CIDU) of the Quezon City police district made him tag De Guzman to “suit their own agenda.”
Angel said he only signed the affidavit given to him by CIDU men who supposedly threatened to implicate him in other unsolved crimes in the city if he did not admit his involvement in the Pastor murder.
“Right at the very start when I was under the custody of the CIDU, some police elements of the office told me blankly, that if I did not cooperate, all the unsolved crimes in Quezon City will be heaped on me, and they could even accuse me of killing Magellan,” he claimed.
“Or they said they would bring me for a ride, which means they will shoot me and report that I tried to grab their guns. That’s why I was always afraid,” he added in Filipino.
He believe the CIDU’s action was due to the heavy pressure on the QCPD to solve the murder, especially after it was mentioned by President Aquino in his State of the Nation Address last July.
“Of course, the mention of President Aquino in his SONA relating to the killing and its immediate solution put the leadership at the QCPD under heavy pressure to solve the slaying by any foul means in their book, for fear of losing favor,” he added.
He added that he was deprived of his constitutional right to secure a lawyer and was also forced to remain silent over the police-prepared extra-judicial confession.
Angel’s recantation, however, does not necessarily mean that De Guzman and Dalia are cleared.
Sources said investigation both of police and the National Bureau of Investigation pointed to them as masterminds.
“It’s just a matter of who the gunman really was,” an insider privy to the probe told The STAR.
Chief Inspector Rodel Marcelo, head of the QCPD’s CIDU, said they stand by Angel’s confession about Pastor’s murder.
“We stand by his (Angel’s) confession. We believe what he told us (when he was arrested) was the truth,” Marcelo said in an interview.
Marcelo said they do not see any problem with Angel’s retraction.
“He executed an affidavit detailing plans, the killing,” Marcelo said, nothing that Angel faced three lawyers, one from the IBP (Integrated Bar of the Philippines), a city prosecutor and a state prosecutor.
Angel was even assisted by his own father, who is also a lawyer, Marcelo said.
“He should have recanted right then and there,” Marcelo said.
Marcelo even added there had been cases in the past wherein a witness or a suspect retracted but the initial extrajudicial confession still prevailed in court.
Meanwhile, Angel also denied the drug charges filed against him by police in his counter-affidavit.– With Reinir Padua