Police to hold parallel probe on Vizconde massacre
Sunday, December 19, 2010
MANILA – Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Raul Bacalzo has ordered the creation of a special investigation team that will conduct a parallel probe of the 19-year-old Vizconde massacre case.
Bacalzo’s directive to the Chief of Directorial Staff and the Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management on Sunday was in response to Malacañang’s order on Friday for the four key government agencies to conduct a reinvestigation of the case.
Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Sr. issued the order dated December 16 to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the PNP, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and the Department of Interior and Local Government.
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Bacalzo tasked PNP Director for Investigation and Detective Management Arturo Cacdac to supervise the special team to be composed of crime investigators from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, forensic examiners from the Crime Laboratory, and operatives from intelligence and investigative units of the National Capital Region Police Office.
The senior police official said the team has been instructed to closely coordinate all investigative efforts with the DOJ and the NBI.
He also guaranteed the availability of other PNP personnel, units, and resources in support of the operations of the special investigation team.
The government has until June 29, 2011, to file charges against prospective suspects of the Vizconde case before the prescription period for filing expires. The Vizconde massacre happened on June 29, 1991.
The Supreme Court acquitted last week principal accused Hubert Webb, Antonio Lejano, Hospicio Fernandez, Peter Estrada, Michael Gatchalian, Miguel Rodriguez and ex-police officer Gerardo Biong, for failure of the prosecution to prove their case beyond lingering doubt and amid the alleged unreliability of its key witness, Jessica Alfaro.
Webb, Lejano, Gatchalian, Pyke Fernandez, Rodriguez and Estrada were freed December 14 after spending 15 years in jail, while Biong was earlier released from prison after completing his sentence.
Robbery gang
Meanwhile, a lawyer of Hubert Webb said on Sunday that the NBI, which also conducts its own probe, should again train its sights on a robbery gang who were the first set of suspects in the case.
While the Webb family has expressed their support for the move of the Aquino government to find the real perpetrators behind the gruesome murders, any reinvestigation to be conducted by the NBI that would only lead to Webb and the two other missing respondents — Artemio “Dong” Ventura and Joey Filart — would only prove futile, said lawyer Jose Flaminiano, who was among Webb’s original defense counsels during the trial of the case.
“Reinvestigation is key to the resolution of the case, but to try to arrest Ventura and Filart will only be an exercise in futility. These two are fictitious, there are no such persons,” he said in a phone interview.
Flaminiano said that even during the trial court hearings, the defense camp had searched all the records of the National Statistics Office, the Commission on Elections and other institutions, and even hired private investigators, to locate these individuals whom prosecution witness Alfaro named as part of Webb’s group when they barged into the Vizconde residence on June 29, 1991, to commit the crime.
However, Flaminiano said, their search efforts were in vain as they didn’t find anybody using the same name or aliases, prompting them to conclude that these names were just concocted by Alfaro to further cement her story to pin down Webb for the rape and murder of Carmela Vizconde and for the killings of her mother Estrellita and her younger sister Jennifer.
“Even the police had stopped looking for Ventura and Filart,” he said. As far as Flaminiano is concerned, this only shows that these names are just the products of the imagination of some police officers who imparted these to Jessica,”
Alfaro claimed in her affidavit that Ventura was her drug supplier, while Filart was a relative of retired Commodore Marino Filart. She further claimed that she even picked up Ventura from his house in Tondo before proceeding to join Webb and the others in Parañaque on the night of the murders.
Flaminiano said that rather than wasting time and government resources, investigators should focus on the other suspects, the Barroso robbery gang.
“Look for the other suspects,” he urged the NBI. “They executed sworn statements subscribed before then-Chief State Prosecutor Aurelio Trampe. I believe that they are the ones (behind the massacre). They took valuable articles from the Vizconde house, which police found in their pawnshop. Very notorious ang gang na iyan dati (This gang was very notorious around the time of the murders). Our investigators should gather leads from there.”
The lawyer noted that two members of the group had been convicted of robbery and are still serving time at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City.
The group members had earlier owned up to the crime, but retracted their extrajudicial confessions on allegations that they were just tortured by police. Their retraction was later on granted by the trial court, prompting police to look for another set of suspects.
Malacañang, meanwhile, expressed confidence that authorities could still find the real perpetrators of the Vizconde massacre case.
Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said best efforts have been exerted by the authorities to attain justice for the family of Lauro Vizconde.
She said finding the suspects will not be that difficult since there have been evidences on hand from the previous investigation.
Uncalled for
On the other hand, another defense lawyer, Demetrio Custodio, lashed at Supreme Court spokesman Jose Midas Marquez for saying that Webb’s acquittal does not necessarily mean that he is innocent, only that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him.
“This personal opinion of the SC (Supreme Court) spokesperson is uncalled for. First, it is not his place to interpret the decision of the SC. The decision speaks for itself,” said Custodio in a statement.
Custodio added that the High Court, in no uncertain terms, categorically stated that Alfaro, who was the sole eyewitness presented by the prosecution, “was not a credible and trustworthy witness and her testimony was not worthy of belief.”
The Supreme Court likewise gave credence to the certifications issued by the United States and the Philippine governments proving that Webb was in the United States between March 1991 and October 1992.
“As a lawyer, (Marquez) should know that there is no need for the magistrates to say that Hubert and his co-accused are innocent. Because of the presumption of innocence, Hubert and his co-accused are innocent unless proven otherwise, and there is no need for them to be declared such,” he said. (Jill Beltran/VR/ECV/Sunnex)
Source: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/local-news/police-hold-parallel-probe-vizconde-massacre
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