RSSMANILA (UCAN) — Anti-gambling crusader Archbishop Oscar Cruz said he met with Senator Panfilo Lacson before the politician fled the country prior to his being charged in connection with a double-murder case.
Archbishop Cruz, the Philippine Church’s judicial vicar, said he met Lacson in Intramuros, Manila, days before the senator left in January. The archbishop said Lacson told him of plans to leave but did not say where he was headed.
“I just listened to him and I believed him,” Archbishop Cruz said. The opposition senator is wanted for allegedly ordering the murders of deposed president Joseph Estrada’s publicist Salvador Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000.
Lacson was serving as National Police chief under Estrada when Dacer and Corbito were abducted. Their charred remains were later found in a field south of Manila.
Suspected police officers who were charged in the case said Estrada ordered the killing weeks before his impeachment trial.
A witness told the impeachment court in 2001 that Dacer was abducted because of his knowledge of gambling activities of Best World Resources Corporation, a firm linked to Estrada’s presidential campaign and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation. The ex-president has denied the allegation.
Police Officer Cezar Mancao, Jr., before being extradited from the United States issued an affidavit in February 2009 saying he had heard Lacson, his former superior, order the killings.
The National Bureau of Investigation resumed its probe of the murders after Mancao returned in June 2009 to testify in the case. Lacson dropped out of the May 10 presidential race the day after he arrived in Manila.
He reportedly left Jan. 5 for Hong Kong. In his press statement issued Feb. 3, Lacson wrote he left the country to escape “harassment” from the Department of Justice (DOJ) amid reports that he would be arrested.
“As I had correctly suspected, the harassment by the DOJ upon the order of Malacanang will never stop,” the opposition senator said. The charges against him are part of the presidential office’s “vendetta” for his many exposes about President Gloria Arroyo and her administration’s “corruption,” Lacson wrote.
Archbishop Cruz believes Lacson’s claim. “I don’t think he’s capable of doing what he’s being accused of,” he said.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the presidential office “has nothing to do” with the filing of charges against Lacson.
PR08740.1587 February 5, 2010 39 EM-lines (387 words)
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