Ex-Cotabato City police chief faces slay raps over cop’s death

COTABATO CITY — Probers filed murder charges with the city prosecutor’s office the other day against the city’s former police chief, Superintendent Ame-rodin Hamdag, for the Oct. 11 fatal shooting of a policeman who had accused him of protecting operators of illegal gambling and illegal transport terminals.

Even so, Muslim and Christian religious communities in Central Mindanao criticized President Arroyo and Justice Secretary Hernando Perez for ignoring appeals for a separate probe by the National Bureau of Investigation on the fatal shooting of SPO1 Aljerico Llorente inside the Rosary Heights police precinct here.

"They did not even bother to lift a finger and task the NBI to act on our appeals, even just for cosmetic purposes," lamented Ustadz Abdullah Macacaid, a Maranaw preacher.

Superintendent Alberto Salvo, unit chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said they have an "airtight" case against Hamdag and his two escorts, PO1 Alim Pagadur and SPO4 Edgar Bellaflor.

"I hope our filing of murder charges against them will erase apprehensions of many sectors in Cotabato City of a possible whitewash of the case because the suspects belong to the Philippine National Police and so are we in the CIDG," Salvo told Catholic radio station dxMS here.

Salvo said they have gathered substantial evidence showing that Hamdag was directly involved, "by inducement," in the killing of Llorente.

Hamdag earlier said Pagadur was forced to shoot Llorente "in self-defense" after he (Llorente) opened fire at them while they were conducting a routine inspection at the Rosary Heights police precinct at about 9 a.m. last Oct. 11.

Just a week before his death, Llorente distributed to media outlets and to Muslim and Christian religious communities here a sworn statement and evidence detailing Hamdag’s alleged involvement in the operations of illegal gambling syndicates and illegal transport terminals in the city.