De Lima, Trillanes seek probe of jail brawl
SENATORS Leila de Lima and Antonio Trillanes IV on Wednesday sought a Senate inquiry into a brawl inside New Bilibid Prison (NBP) that left a convicted drug lord dead and four other inmates wounded, one of whom De Lima had said was once a government asset there.
De Lima and Trillanes filed Senate Resolution No. 174 seeking an inquiry into the prison fight so that remedial legislation could be made to prevent a repeat of the incident.
Trillanes said he and De Lima wanted to find out what really happened, and sought to have those involved in the brawl to be called to the inquiry.
Among those inmates was murder convict Jaybee Sebastian who, De Lima had said, was a government asset inside NBP when she was justice secretary.
The proposed resolution also asked the designated committee to look into the “isolation, intimidation and maltreatment, torture and other alleged human rights violations perpetrated in NBP by the Philippine National Police-Special Action Force (SAF).”
The senators noted “credible reports” that SAF officers were taking inmates and gang members for “overnight interrogation sessions.”
Isolated
“Prisoners are being selected and isolated just to be intimated into fabricating testimonies to support any case that the Department of Justice (DOJ) wants to file,” they said.
Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III and Sen. Manny Pacquiao urged authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident.
Sotto said prison guidelines must be reviewed so that inmates with grudges against others would not be held in the same cell.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson said NBP and DOJ officials must conduct immediately an in-depth investigation “not only on the motive of the stabbing incident but also on the aspect of the presence of drugs and weapons inside the cells of those involved.”
“While we understand that cleaning up the facility cannot be accomplished overnight, it cannot also be denied that no less than [Justice Secretary Vitaliano] Aguirre II had bragged about the drastic reforms inside NBP during the recent congressional hearings,” Lacson said.
