Osmeña ready to face House probe of vigilante slays if...

CEBU CITY —Mayor Tomas Osmeña has imposed certain conditions for him to cooperate and appear in a planned congressional inquiry into the rash of vigilante-style killings here.

Osmeña said he must be convinced that the inquiry is not a witch-hunt and that there must not be any attempt to search for skeletons in his closet. If he sees any hint of this, he is out, he said.

The summary executions of nearly two dozen former convicts and suspected criminals are widely believed to be the handiwork of vigilantes.

"Good. I can understand that they are being prodded by this group to look into it," Osmeña said when asked to comment on the inquiry the House committee on human rights, headed by Akbayan party list Rep. Loreta Ann Rosales, is reportedly planning to conduct.

The group Osmeña alluded to is the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) Cebu City chapter which has grown increasingly vocal against the killings and has come up with a manifesto which it dared Osmeña to sign. The mayor refused to bite, calling it a "silly trap."

The IBP suspects that the so-called "Hunters’ Team," made up of selected members of the police and which Osmeña created, is behind the killings.

Osmeña, while acknowledging that he may have inspired the summary executions, flatly rejected insinuations he had a direct involvement in the killings.

Last December, Osmeña announced that he was creating the Hunters’ Team whose main task is to "seek and destroy" criminals and to "shoot and kill" them if they resist or harm their victims.

A few days after he made the announcement, the killings began, and Osmeña found himself in the eye of a storm. But the mayor characteristically refused to budge, not even when Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal called for a stop to the killings in a Mass during the Feast of Santo Niño last month.

Osmeña said he would appear in the House hearings, if needed, but only "up to a certain extent."

"If it appears to be a witch-hunt or (they are) looking for skeletons in my closet, I will not appear," he said.

"If the investigation is really to solve the summary killings in the city, then there is no doubt I will be around if and when (I am) required by the committee... during one of its hearings," he added.

Osmeña said he has anticipated such a move because "they are trying to put the city under their own jurisdiction."

Osmeña also anticipates that if he fails to show up in the hearings, for whatever reason, his critics will immediately pounce on him and declare his absence a proof of guilt.

The IBP has threatened to charge anyone involved in the killings.

Osmeña said his admission of having perhaps inspired the killings should not be taken as open support for vigilantism.

He said he was simply emphasizing the need to give more weight to the security of the victims than of the criminals. — Freeman News Service