Cebu solon presents witness vs NBI in mistaken shooting

CEBU CITY — Rep. Raul del Mar presented a witness during a congressional hearing here yesterday to disprove earlier claims by the Cebu office of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) that it had stopped employing confidential agents since NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco ordered it stopped last year.

The witness, Bobby Nalzaro, program director of GMA-7 in Cebu, showed footages of three separate local NBI operations from September to October last year where confidential agents were involved.

Yesterday’s hearing was part of a congressional investigation into the mistaken shooting of six Plantation Bay Resort employees in Mandaue City last Dec. 13. Confidential agents reportedly took part in the bungled operation.

Confidential agents are non-NBI personnel who, for one reason or another, get to be used like bonafide regular agents, a practice since officially banned but which apparently got ignored in the Dec. 13 incident.

Aside from five NBI regular agents, a number of confidential agents involved in the near-massacre, as witnesses described it, of resort employees Michael Monsod, Nenette Castillon, Gian Carlo Cajoles, Esther Luz Mae Gregorio, Donaldo Enabe and Alfie Fernandez, have been identified.

The NBI agents mistook the Mitsubishi L-300 van carrying the resort employees as that of a major drug pusher. They tried to flag them down but since it was 2 a.m. and the agents did not identify themselves, the resort workers thought they were about to be held up so they sped away.

A wild chase ensued with the NBI agents firing at will at the escaping van. Eventually, the van was disabled, its body heavily peppered with more than 70 bullet holes.

Several of those inside were hit, some even after the van came to a halt as the agents continued to fire at the vehicle with a wide assortment of guns.

Del Mar wondered why an order issued yet in July last year by Wycoco revoking the appointments of confidential agents appeared to have been ignored and violated by the bureau’s Cebu office.

NBI officials in Cebu earlier denied there were confidential agents who actually took part in the operation with the regular agents, claiming that the participation of some civilian volunteers who were with them was limited only to rendering assistance such as carrying flashlights and driving the vehicles used.

But Del Mar said he has evidence to disprove that the NBI agents’ claims.

Police have filed charges of multiple frustrated murder and attempted murder against suspended NBI regional director Romulo Manapsal as an accessory, and special agents Angelito Magno, Arnel Pura, Teodoro Saavedra, Danilo Garay and Rey Tumalon as principals, and confidential agent Paul Lauro. — Freeman News Service