Report Details Manero Links with Police, Military Officers
Published in Philippine Daily Inquirer
(February 28, 2000)
THE PHILIPPINE National Police is allegedly in possession of documents detailing how priest killer Norberto Manero Jr. escaped from jail in 1992 and worked out his pardon with the help of certain police and military officials, the INQUIRER learned yesterday.
The INQUIRER source, a former police officer privy to a PNP-Internal Affairs Service investigation of the escape, said a portion o the probe's report detailed Manero's connection with the military and police.
The source did not name Manero.'s supposed connections.
But he said that what was particularly revealing in the IAS report was that Manero's escape was never mentioned in any of the alarm reports isuued by prison authorities in Davao.
According to the agency's report, Manero claimed that he had not escaped but simply walkd out of the Davao Penal Colony unchallenged.
Accoridng to the source, the report also said that on the convict's behalf, the wife of a poice handcariied a folder, containing papers seeking executive clemency for Manero, to Malacañang for endorsement to then President Fidel Ramos.
The report said that Manero, while already in the custody of the police, was among a crowd of welcomers during Ramos' visit ti Cotabato City on Nov. 12,1992.
Manero attempted to personally hand to President Ramos the folder containing municipal resolutions endorsing his request for pardon. When he failed to do so, the colonel's wife helped him.
Manero escaped from the Davao Penal Colony in May 1992, some seven years after being imprisoned for the April 1985 murder of Italian priest Tullio Favali in Tulunan, North Cotabato.
The documents are the product of an extensive investigation conducted in 1992 by the PNP-IAS in abticipation of a congressional inquiry sought by a Mindanao-based congressman who got wind of Manero's escape.
A group of investigators was sent by then Chief Supt. Benjamin Valention, hea of the PNP-IAS, to Davao after then North Cotabato Rep.Gregorio Andalon exposed the circumstances behind Manero's escape and hinted that the military and the police were coddling him.
President Estrada yesterday said it was up to justice officials to decide whether Manero should end up back behind bars.
"Leave it to them, he told reporters at the Davao International Airport upon his arrival from General Santos City yesterday afternoon.
He said Manero was "detained and under further investigation and that church groups demanding his return to jail should wait for the results of the probe.
The pardoned murderer, who surrendered Friday night to PNP chief Deputy Director Panfilo Lacson, arrived in General Santos City at 8:15 a.m. yesterday onboard a Philippine Airlines flight from Manila.
When he turned himself in toLacson, Manero was accompanied by his lawyer and by retired Col. Rafael Galvez, a member of the former Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM).
Protective Custody
Manero arrived in Mindanao not to be investigated for ellegedly violating his conditional pardon but ot face a 1977 case murder of brothers Ali and Mambawatan Mamalumpong.
The alleged cannibalistic killer was accompanied by his wife, Evelyn Silvestre, Manila-based lawyer Ruben Platon and two agents from the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force.
The agents turned him over to the "protective custody" of Supt. Manuel Raval, the regional police cgief. Manero was brought to the PNP regional hesadquarters in Isulan, Sultan Kudarat, and will be presented before the sala of Judge Jaime Infante of the Regional ria Court Branch 38 in Alanel, Sarangani at 9 this mornig.
A government lawyer said Manero should have been arrested anmd jailed upon his arrival at the airport instead of being placed under police custody, because a 1981 warrant for his arrest still stands.
Raval told the INQUIRER that Manero was being held at the detention center at the provincial headquarters.
Folk hero
Part of the PNP-IAS report, according to the source, delved into how and why Manero was considered local folk hero in some Mindanao provinces.
Manero was described in the reports as a paramilitary hero who had helped the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the PNP in fighting both communist and moro insurgents in Mindanao in the 1970's and 1980's.
His main role, according to the, report, was to liberate - together with his group of "Ilagas" - sitios and barrios under th control of the insurgents, and turn the areas over to the govrnment forces.
After his "escape," the report allegedly said, Manero had an opportunity to work at the Floirendo-owne Tadeco banana plantation near the Davao Penal Colony. Inmates work on the plantation, which has an agreement with the justice department.
But Manero reportedly went home to his hometown in South Cotabato where he was reunited with his brither Artemio.
Manero workd as a farmer for the five months that he was an escapee.
Businesswoman
A farmowner and businesswoman in South Cotabato whom Manero had reportedly protected from mulcters and bandits helped him process his request for pardon under the Ramos administration, according to the source.
She introduced him to clergymen in Mindanao and he to asked their forgiveness for the Favali's killing, but they apparently did not want to endorse his pardon request.
So she helped him get the endorsement of municipalnofficials instead. But Manro could not be pardoned since he was still an escapee.
The situation apparently made him to decide to surrender; and he asked Andolana and instead gave himself up to then PNP Region 12 commander Senior Supt. Saturnino Madina.
Manero was immediately brought to the PNP ofice in Southern Mindanao where he was held until he was turnedover to the Davao prison authorities.
Nullification
On Thursday, Justice Secretary Artemio Tuquero said manero would be sent back to jail to serve the "unexpired portion" of his prison term for violating at least three conditions of the executive clemency granted in December.
Tuquero issued an order to arrest and recommit him even as the National Bureau of Investigation launched a nationwide manhunt on the basis of the old Mamalumpong case arrest warrant.
Manero showed up in Lacson's office Friday night.
"He did not surrender because there is no case," said Platon, Manero's newly hired counsel, arguing that the court was filed in 1980 was now defunct.
Platon told reporters his client would file a petition for the nullification of the warrant issued by the lat Judge Pedro Animas.
He said Manero would ask for a preliminary investigation should the case be refiled bu the complainants. The case, however, according to some legal experts, needs no refiling as it was merely "archived until the defendants could be brought back to the jurisdiction of the court."
Platon said he had not received an official copy of the complaint.
The Mamalumpong case was archived in 1981 following the escape of Manero and first wife, Leonarda Lacson, from the "protective custody" of then Col. Mariano Miranda, Army brigade commander.
Appeal
Manero, once known as Kumander Bucay, again appealed to the Catholic Church to give him a chance to prove he had changed.
"I'm asking them to forgive me and let me live in peace with my loved ones, " he said in Ilonggo.
He said he harbored suspicions that some Church leaders "conspired" with lawyer and Representative Andolana in spoiling his plans to spend the remaining years of his life with his loved ones.
Kidapawan Bishop Romulo Valles and Fr. Peter Geremia, a colleague of Favali's, early this month filed a petition in Malacañang seeking the recall of Manero's pardon. Andolana, as counsel of the Kidapawan Diocese, helped them file the petition.
"We would like him to really live in peace based on justice. But he has to answer cases filed against him and it k would be good for him to answer these cases and that he would be sincere in his act of contrition," Andolana told the INQUIRER.
By DAVE M. VERI]DIANO
AND AQUILES Z. ZONIO
PDI Mindanao Bureau
With a reportfrom Jowel F. Canuday
and Carolyn 0. Arguillas,
PDI Mindanao Bureau
