‘No military hand in Davao City blasts’

DAVAO CITY — "Certainly, it was not the Armed Forces."

Thus said Senior Superintendent Conrado Laza, city police chief, as he denied yesterday claims by the mutineers that the military, particularly Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes and Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus, chief of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP), had a hand in the twin bombings that rocked this city last March and April.

"Our investigations pointed to the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) as the perpetrator (of the bombings)," Laza said.

Last March 4, a powerful blast ripped through a crowded waiting shed outside the Davao International Airport. Nearly a month later, on April 2, another bomb exploded in a row of food stalls outside the passenger terminal at the Sasa wharf.

The two blasts left 39 people dead and over 200 others wounded.

Laza confirmed that Corpus was, indeed, in this city on April 2 but to attend a Mindanao-wide indigenous people’s conference held in one of the hotels here.

He added that the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group has already filed charges against MILF chairman Hashim Salamat and 200 other leaders and field commanders of the separatist group in connection with the two bombings.

"You just have to understand that the charges had been filed and the warrants of arrest had to be quashed to give way to the resumption of the peace negotiations," Laza said.

Meanwhile, military and police officials in Southern Mindanao said all of their men have been accounted for.

"We have been constantly checking on them. We have been doing this since the time there were rumors about a coup," said Chief Superintendent Isidro Lapeña, regional police director.

Army Col. Gaudencio Pangilinan, commander of Task Force Davao, said his men were similarly in their assigned posts securing this city against terrorist threats.