Judgment frightens new KB witnesses

Prosecutors of the Kuratong Baleleng multiple-murder case couldn’t believe that Judge Teresa Yadao had dismissed it just like that. And as they decried in a press conference yesterday her bias for principal accused Sen. Panfilo Lacson, they couldn’t believe their ears either as the news blared on radio. President Gloria Arroyo was calling on them to stop chiding Yadao and just abide by the ruling.

"There goes our witnesses," private lawyer Arno Sanidad slumped into a chair, as human-rights activist Fr. Robert Reyes questioned Mrs. Arroyo’s meddling. At the justice department across town, state lawyers who were preparing to sue Yadao for incompetence were baffled. It turned out that the radio station got it all wrong. All the President had said, when pressed to react to the exoneration of her political archfoe, was that "we should all abide by the rule of law and let the case take its normal route."

"Is Lacson so influential that he can now get the news distorted?" a colleague later asked Sanidad. The latter shrugged and said he wouldn’t know about the press, but he sure is aghast with the senator’s clout with the court.

Yadao had found no probable cause to go to trial, and have Lacson and 33 co-accused detained in the meantime. She said the prosecutors failed to present evidence that a crime probably was committed on May 18, 1995. Government and private lawyers wondered if she even read the affidavits of three of six new witnesses.

PNP Insp. Ysmael Yu, Philippine Military Academy Class of ’92, had sworn that as assault team leader at Superville Subd., Parañaque, on the night of May 17, he had taken alive eight suspected KB gangmen, including ex-cop Carlito Alap-ap. He turned them over to Chief Supt. Jewel Canson and Sr. Supt. Francisco Zubia. The next day he heard that Alap-ap, the seven others and three more men were killed in a supposed shootout with lawmen on Commonwealth Ave., Quezon City. It went against the 1995 official report of Canson, Zubia and then-Chief Supt. Lacson. They had claimed to have spotted the bank robbers in Parañaque, chased them all the way to the other side of town, and killed them in a gunfight. The contradiction alone would have been probable cause for Yadao to issue arrest warrants for the accused.

Moreover, Sr. Insp. Abelardo Ramos, as head of perimeter security, corroborated Yu’s statement that eight males were taken alive at Superville. He saw them loaded into their two Mitsubishi L-300 vans and driven to Camp Crame, where more men were shoved in. Zubia called him into the office, with Lacson and Chief Supt. Romeo Acop present. Details of a summary execution were given to Ramos. He swore that Lacson nudged him and said, "baka may mabuhay pa diyan (there might be survivors." He then rode one of the vans on a long convoy to Commonwealth, where his team shot the suspects.

Ramos’s affidavit was a virtual confession of crime. It not only was clear evidence for probable cause. It also jibed with the PNP Crime Lab report that the 11 victims had no powder burns and thus couldn’t have fired guns, all bore fatal gunshot wounds in the head, and had no shoes. Strange that the Canson-Lacson-Zubia report stated that the drivers of the two vans were able to flee during the firefight. Wouldn’t it be natural for policemen chasing armed criminals to go for the driver and the tires? The van bodies, and only some of the windows, were riddled with bulletholes.

Sr. Police Officer Wilmor Medes also swore with Ramos about a coverup. PNP civilian agent Mario Enad, one of the original witnesses, had accused them of taking the victims’ belongings, clothes and shoes. To wriggle out of the robbery rap and under pressure from Zubia, they signed a statement back in 1995 that neither they nor Enad were part of the raid at the Superville hideout. Yadao had lent credence to that false statement, yet did not consider Enad’s consistent line that the executioners gave him the victims’ shirts as souvenirs.

The three witnesses are now fearful of vengeance, Sanidad said. Some of the accused are still in the service, with higher rank and influence. Zubia, for one, is now a general.

Yu, Ramos and Medes are in protective custody of the Intelligence Service-AFP. When Gen. Victor Corpus was its chief, he disclosed that the three would receive text messages offering millions of pesos to recant. An ISAFP officer said the families of the three are also afraid. "We just secure them," he said when asked if the three would now leave camp, "it’s up to them if they still wish to serve as witness or not."

Sanidad intends to file a motion for Yadao to reconsider her ruling. At the same time, though, he will ask her to inhibit from the case and turn it over to a family court, as required by law, since two of the victims were minors. Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño plans to elevate the case to the Court of Appeals to show that there indeed is probable cause to try it. Together, an associate whispered, they will sue Yadao before the Supreme Court for incompetence, patent bias and grave abuse of discretion. The Tribunal had fined Yadao in 2002 for dilly-dallying for a year in issuing an arrest warrant for an indictee in another heinous crime.

Sanidad is worried about three more new witnesses whose identities he will not divulge until their families are secured. One of them, he said, will explain what happened to the $2 million and P25 million in two valises that KB gang boss Wilson Soronda carried in his car and stashed at Superville, respectively. The witness will also state how Soronda was killed in Pasig, while his sister, arrested with three of the male victims at Camia St., Alabang, on the night of May 17, was stabbed dead and thrown in Laguna.

The two others will explain the intricate coverup that led to the case’s provisional dismissal in 1999.

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Catch Sapol ni Jarius Bondoc, Saturdays at 8 a.m., on DWIZ (882-AM).

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