Dacer slay suspect tagged in rubout

SAN MANUEL, Isabela — After almost 10 years of silence, the family of an alleged rubout victim has come out in the open to seek justice, implicating an officer of the disbanded Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF), then a station commander here, in the killing.

Tricycle driver Renato Matias said his brother, Gil, was killed in a rubout sometime in 1990 by a police team led by Superintendent Glenn Dumlao, who was then a police captain.

Incidentally, the provincial police commander then was former Philippine National Police chief Panfilo Lacson, who was a police colonel at that time.

Dumlao has been also tagged in the kidnapping and murder of public relations man Salvador "Bubby" Dacer and his driver Manuel Corbito.

Dumlao has remained in hiding. A police intelligence report showed that he has sought the help of former Presidential Assistant for Northern Luzon Junie Cua.

The report said Dumlao has frequented Cua’s residence "as if he had a very urgent matter to discuss with the former presidential assistant."

Cua is a close ally of Quirino Gov. Pedro Bacani who, incidentally, is Dumlao’s uncle. Dumlao, together with Bacani and six other PAOCTF men, has been implicated in yet another kidnap-murder that of barangay head Morjil Valencia of Diffun town in January 1999.

Matias said his brother, whom police suspected to be the head of a notorious akyat-bahay gang operating in the towns of Burgos, Roxas and Mallig, was reported by the police to have been killed in a shootout with Dumlao’s group in Barangay Lantin in Roxas town, five kilometers away from this municipality.

Gil, the police claimed, shot it out with them. Matias, however, doubted this, claiming his brother was a victim of a rubout.

Another Matias sibling claimed that the day before the alleged shootout, Gil sent surrender feelers to local police authorities.

"Bakit nila pinatay kung susuko naman siya (Why did they shoot him if he wanted to surrender)?," he asked.

Residents of Barangay Lantin, however, could no longer remember the incident. But a former barangay official, who requested anonymity, told The STAR that some residents witnessed the alleged rubout which happened in broad daylight.

Gil, according to witnesses, was about to surrender when Dumlao’s men allegedly shot him several times with 12-gauge shotguns.

"Walang shootout na nangyari. Yung mga pulis lang naman ang nagpaputok (There was no shootout. Only the policemen fired their guns)," recalled a witness.