DOJ asked to compel Dumlao to testify

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Justice (DOJ) was asked yesterday to use former police superintendent Glenn Dumlao as a state witness in the killing of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000.

Lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, counsel for former police senior superintendent Cezar Mancao III, said the DOJ should compel Dumlao to testify for the prosecution or be charged again as an accused in the case.

Dumlao, who had retracted his testimony a few times already, is being used as ordinary witness in the trial before Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 18.

In a three-page letter, Topacio urged Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to reassess Dumlao’s status, reminding her that testifying as state witness was “the condition that had been given by the court to drop him (Dumlao) as accused.” This, he said, gives prosecutors the right to “demand that Dumlao act as a state witness.”

“To leave things as they are — with Dumlao discharged as an accused without using him as state witness — would result in one of the major perpetrators of the Dacer-Corbito double murder case running scot-free without incurring criminal liability, without aiding in the prosecution of the case and even susceptible to manipulation by interested parties,” he said.

Topacio said “Dumlao admits to participation in the crime and hence possesses information of great value to the prosecution, so much so that he must either be utilized as state witness, or if he refuses, then as participles criminis, he must be included forthwith as an accused.”

Dumlao was one of those originally charged in an information filed by the DOJ on May 11, 2001 for the Dacer-Corbito double murder case. His name was dropped from the charge sheet on Sept. 15, 2009.

Topacio said Dumlao has made statement inimical to the prosecution’s case. In a hearing last August, Dumlao said he had no part in the double murder, and that he was pressured by certain officials to name Sen. Panfilo Lacson, his former boss under the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, as a suspect.

When asked who was pressuring him, Dumlao named then Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) chief Victor Corpuz, former justice secretary Hernani Perez, former Philippine National Police Intelligence Group head and Metro Rail Transit general manager Reynaldo Berroya, the late former National Bureau of Investigation director Reynaldo Wycoco, and former PNP chief Roberto Lastimoso. – Edu Punay, Sandy Araneta