Murder most foul

Monique Cu-unjieng La’o was at home with her husband on the evening of Nov. 7, 2005 when they began receiving phone calls from friends of Monique’s son Anton, at the time a college student at La Salle-St. Benilde.

Anton had received a call some hours earlier and he had told his parents he was going out to have coffee with his friend, Francis Xavier Manzano, and another boy who, they found out later, was named Brian Anthony Dulay. So when they heard that Anton had been involved in a  “shoot-out” or had been “rubbed out” by police, they were startled and shocked. “My husband went to Greenhills, where Anton’s friends said he was shot, while I kept monitoring the news for any report on the incident,” she recalls.

Anton was her oldest child and only son. As she was pregnant at the time, she was counseled to stay home and wait for more news. The baby girl born soon after the tragedy is now 5 years old, but Monique is still waiting—for the case she and Manzano’s sister, Jennifer Eloise, have filed against the police involved in the “rub-out/shoot-out” to reach trial, and for justice for the three young men gunned down in a dark street by law enforcers.

Their lawyer Jose Manuel Diokno, in his pleading before the Supreme Court, calls this “a case of impunity like no other.”

Named respondents in the case filed recently were Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, Overall Deputy Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro, Judge Danilo Buemio of the Pasig Regional Trial Court, and the 11 police officers involved in the Greenhills shooting. They are asking the high tribunal, now embroiled in a legal and political dispute of its own, to “annul and set aside” the resolution of the Office of the Ombudsman issued in 2009 downgrading the charges from murder to homicide against five (the lowest-ranking five) of the police respondents, and exonerating the other six officers, and subsequent orders on the case.

They also ask the high tribunal to prohibit the Office of the Ombudsman from proceeding with the prosecution of the homicide cases, and Judge Buemio from conducting further proceedings on the same cases.

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The Cu-Unjiengs and Manzanos are buttressing their case on two key pieces of evidence. One is a video filmed by a crew of the TV station UNTV showing the police blocking off the street and lying in wait for the car of the three victims; using high-powered weapons to shoot at the car; and later approaching the car to shoot two of the passengers in the head while they were still apparently alive, and planting evidence. The video was widely disseminated to other broadcast outfits and was the talk of the town at the time.

The other is a report by top forensic expert Dr. Raquel Fortun, whose services were secured by the Commission on Human Rights which investigated the case. In her findings, Fortun said “the evaluation of the available evidence on the shooting incident does not support the police allegation that the decedents had fired at them” (she said over a hundred bullet holes were found on the car, and none came from the inside). Even more damning was her conclusion that the victims “were most probably still alive when the second set of shots were fired and could have potentially benefited from immediate medical attention.”

Based on evidence gathered, the CHR found 10 police officers liable for “arbitrary depriving victims” of their lives, and forwarded the case to the Ombudsman for appropriate action. It was then and there that the case proceeded to gather dust, for the next five years. That is, until the surprising results of its preliminary investigation.

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What’s at stake here, asserts Diokno, is more than securing justice for three young men killed in the prime of their lives—which is important enough by itself.

“The issues raised in this case are of transcendental importance,” notes Diokno in his pleading. “If a case as strong as this one—complete with video footage, a thorough forensic evaluation, and the sworn admissions of the policemen themselves—can be downgraded so easily, what more the other cases where the evidence is good but not as strong?”

The Greenhills rub-out case also involves public accountability and impunity. Since 2004, the pleading notes, the country has witnessed at least one “police rub-out” case a year, and more alarmingly, four of the nine “rub-outs” documented by authorities involved members of the Traffic Management Group, the same group to which the accused belong. When it is involved in violent encounters, the TMG accuses the other side of being car thieves and engaging in a firefight. Also notable is that three of the police officers implicated in this case have also been reportedly involved in other police “rub-outs.

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So frequently have reports of gunfights and rub-outs involving police surfaced in the media that the Filipino public has grown inured to such shocking events. Not even the death of a young girl and her father when police fired upon their car while allegedly chasing car hijackers was enough to rouse us to righteous indignation.

Officials made all the right noises at the time, but the shootings continue.

This is another face of “impunity,” and it flourishes because the culprits know they can get away with it.

In fairness to Carpio-Morales, much of the delay and suspected shenanigans that took place regarding this Greenhills shooting took place during her predecessor’s term. But she is now the ombudsman and it is incumbent upon her to look into allegations of tampering with documents within her office, including possibly the resolutions filed in connection with this case. This is the only way she can live up to the high hopes that accompanied her assumption of the office.