By Florante S. Solmerin
Manila Standard Today
Manila Standard Today
Guns galore. Col. Monico Abang (seated center), the Special Forces ground commander in the shooting incident in Atimonan, Quezon, and his lawyer present to the NBI 15 firearms that were used in the incident.
National Police chief Alan Purisima on Friday said he will abolish the counter-intelligence office of Supt. Hansel Marantan for accomplishing nothing and plunging the police organization into another controversy.
Thirteen people were killed in Atimonan, Quezon, in a supposed encounter on Jan. 6 between a group of policemen and soldiers led by Marantan and people they claimed were criminals.
Guns galore. Col. Monico Abang (seated center), the Special Forces ground commander in the shooting incident in Atimonan, Quezon, and his lawyer present to the NBI 15 firearms that were used in the incident.
The policemen said the 13 men were killed in a shootout, but Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on Thursday said there had been no shootout after witnesses told her what really happened on Jan. 6.
“That unit has not been functioning well, so we will be abolishing it and putting up another one,” Purisima said.
He said President Benigno Aquino III and Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II were appalled by the operation hatched by Marantan on Jan. 6.
Marantan, still recuperating from the bullet wounds he allegedly sustained from the supposed encounter with the 13 men, was sacked as deputy director of the Intelligence Division of the Regional Police Office 4-A after a PNP fact-finding committee found glaring checkpoint violations by his group of 15 policemen and 23 soldiers.
The soldiers were led by Lt. Col. Monico Abang, commanding office of the Army’s 1st Special Forces Battalion.
Marantan’s 15 men were also relieved, while Quezon provincial commander Senior Supt. Valeriano de Leon was fired.
The President then fired Calabarzon Police chief James Melad.
National Police spokesman Generoso Cerbo said Purisima disbanded the counter-intelligence group for failing to check on Supt. Alfredo Consemino, one of the 13 people killed in the supposed encounter and who, according to reports had links to alleged jueteng operator Vic Siman, who was also killed in the supposed encounter.
“Purisima wants to establish a new intelligence office that will perform better,” Cerbo said.
“The Intelligence Group based in Camp Crame led by Senior Superintendent Abelardo Villacorta has not received any reports on Consemino’s association with Vic Siman’s group.”
Hours after the alleged shootout in Lumutan village, local police officials claimed that the fatalities were members of a gun-for-hire group.
But because of allegations that the incident had been a rubout and not a shootout, Aquino designated the National Bureau of Investigation as the sole agency to investigate the incident to avoid a whitewash.
But because of Marantan’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation, de Lima said, they were contemplating to file obstruction-of-justice charges against him.
Earlier, Cerbo said the National Police’s Internal Affairs Service had already started investigating Marantan’s the administrative liability.
Purisima said he had already ordered the Internal Affairs Service to expedite their investigation of Marantan. With Francisco Tuyay
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