Was money the motive for Kuratong rubout?

It sounds from his spokesman’s rantings that Ping Lacson has an inside track to the Supreme Court. Lito Banayo is shrieking that the 1995 Kuratong Baleleng multiple-murder case will be revived with finality. He claims that Malacañang swayed the justices to so rule to silence the senator from telling more about the Jose Pidal alias account. Yet it was Lacson who tried to extract a favorable decision by abusing parliamentary immunity. In an August 18 privilege speech, he babbled that two justices frequent a Makati building where President Gloria Arroyo’s spouse holds office. The malicious insinuation is that the visits led to the Court’s April 1 decision to reopen the KB case. He appealed that judgment, but ignored the Court’s request to identify the justices.

Talking about silencing, though, it appears from official records that that’s what the KB massacre was all about. On May 2, 1995 took place the biggest heist in banking history. Robbers waylaid an armored van near the Manila airport. The Presidential Anti-Crime Commission, of which Lacson was then head of Task Force Habagat, estimated the loot at more than P50 million in various currencies. Gen. Jewel Canson was tasked to head a posse, with the units of Cols. Lacson, Francisco Zubia and Romeo Acop as members.

At dawn of May 18, eleven KB gangmen allegedly were killed in a shootout with Lacson’s men on Commonwealth Avenue, Quezon City, after a car chase. No cop was hurt. News photos showed the slain men wearing no shoes. All were shot in the head. Their two vans were riddled with bullet holes.

At 11 that night, the PACC claimed that gang leader Wilson Soronda also was killed while grabbing a policeman’s gun at a KB hideout in Pasig. The next morning, the naked body of Soronda’s sister Gemma Siplon was found in a grassy patch along the highway in Biñan, Laguna. She had two fatal stab wounds.

Then-Vice President and PACC chief Joseph Estrada hailed the deed as "a result of painstaking intelligence work by the National Police and TF-Habagat." In their post-operation report, Canson, Lacson, Zubia and Acop said a raid on the gang’s hideout in Superville Subd., Parañaque, on the night of May 17 had yielded negative results since it was abandoned. No mention was made of another raid on a house on Camia St. in Alabang where Gemma, her husband and another man were arrested. The officers said they then chanced upon the gang’s two vans in Parañaque and tailed them all the way to Quezon City where a gunfight broke out. They claimed to have recovered from the scene four armalite rifles, 210 ammunition rounds, and P380,000 cash.

Routine verification by the police and NBI showed otherwise. Two police officers, a niece of Soronda and a news photographer swore that the 11 fatalities had been shot in cold blood. The Senate committees on crime, justice and national security, headed respectively by Ernie Maceda, Raul Roco and Orly Mercado, stepped in to investigate.

Piecing evidence together, they found out that Soronda had arrived from Dipolog on the morning of May 17 with niece Jane Gomez and two boys aged 16 and 17. They proceeded to Superville where Soronda showed Jane two valises, one containing P25 million which he left in a cabinet, and the other with $2 million and P250,000 which he threw into the car. They left the boys, summer vacationers from Mindanao, in the house.

The NBI reported that policemen simultaneously raided Superville and Alabang that night. They combed the houses for the loot. Eight males, including the boys, were taken from Superville. With Gemma, her husband and a tenth male from Alabang, they were handcuffed, blindfolded, and driven in their two vans to Camp Crame. Gemma was pulled out and an eleventh male, a detainee with unknown offense, was shoved in for the ride to Commonwealth.

No one answered Soronda phone calls to Superville the following morning. With Jane, he picked up another niece Jinky Pait, who guided them to Gemma’s house. Armed men met and ordered them in. A police agent drove off with the $2 million and P250,000 found in Soronda’s car. Soronda was taken to Camp Crame, then to Pasig. Jane and Jinky were dragged to a PACC safehouse in Antipolo, where they were sexually molested before being dumped at the outskirts of Fort Bonifacio. Days later one of the colonels flew to Hong Kong purportedly to deposit cash.

The Senate bodies declared that the 11 males were shot defenseless since they were then in the custody of the police. Inquiry concluded it was a rubout since only the cops fired guns. The officers couldn’t explain why Gemma and husband were dead in different locales. Maceda stated: "The fact that ranking police officers tried to cover up this grotesque multiple mirder and pass off this inglorious moment as a case of police heroism magnifies the scale of the tragedy." Ninety-six officers and men weren hailed to court.

The two investigating officers and the photographer recanted their statements, however, after Estrada became President and promoted Lacson to general. They complained of cramped quarters with their families under NBI witness protection. Jane simply walked out. The victims’ kin executed affidavits of desistance. In March 1999 Judge Wenceslao Agnir dismissed the case provisionally.

But the victim’s relatives later confided to Newsbreak that they had been paid to withdraw their complaint. In March 2001 two junior officers, Ysmael Uy and Abelardo Ramos, came forward attesting they had taken the victims alive from the raids. And so began the legal battle to revive the case and determine what happened to the cash hoard.

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