NBI won’t meddle in 5 agents’ case

CEBU CITY — The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is keeping its hands off the case of five of its Cebu agents who were dismissed from the service and criminally charged for the mistaken shooting of six resort workers in Mandaue City last Dec. 13.

"It’s up to them. They can file a motion for reconsideration… They have the right to exhaust all legal remedies," said NBI assistant director Lolito Utitco.

The Office of the Ombudsman has found sufficient grounds to criminally charge NBI agents Angelito Magno, Arnel Pura, Danilo Garay, Rey Tumalon and Teodoro Saavedra for what witnesses described as "near-massacre" of six Plantation Bay employees in a botched drug operation.

Also charged were a number of so-called confidential agents. Utitco refused to comment on these non-organic NBI agents, whose services had been terminated by NBI director Reynaldo Wycoco as early as July last year.

Ombudsman director Virginia Palanca-Santiago said the five NBI agents can continue working within the period provided by law within which they can appeal the decision.

Santiago said they have 10 days to file a motion for reconsideration and until such a motion is resolved, there is no legal impediment against their reinstatement since they were subjected to an earlier preventive suspension.

Charges of multiple frustrated murder and double attempted murder were filed against the five NBI agents with the Mandaue City Regional Trial Court the other day.

Santiago said it is up to the NBI as to whether it would reinstate the agents or not pending any motion for reconsideration they may file against the Ombuds—man’s decision.

Under the rules, they can be automatically reinstated once their preventive suspension has lapsed, she said.

Santiago said the NBI also has the discretion on whether the agents will be given salaries or not while the sanctions against them have yet to be implemented.

Acting NBI regional director Reynaldo Esmeralda said it is only Wycoco who can order the reinstatement of the suspended agents as well as former regional director Romulo Manapsal.

At about 2 a.m. of Dec. 13, the NBI agents posted themselves in Looc, Mandaue City, on the lookout for an alleged supplier of drugs who was expected to be driving by in a Mitsubishi L-300 van.

The resort workers, in a similar van, drove by on their way home from a party and were flagged down by the agents.

But the agents had nothing on to identify themselves as from the NBI, and given the unholy hour, the resort workers instead thought they were about to be robbed and sped away.

A wild chase ensued in which the agents peppered the van with no less than 73 bullets from a wide array of high-powered guns. Even after the van eventually stopped, the agents still continued firing. — Cecille Suerte Felipe, Freeman News Service