MANILA, Philippines--The moment he stepped out of the plane on Tuesday afternoon, soldiers forcibly took former Philippine Forest Corp. chief executive officer Rodolfo Noel "Jun" Lozada Jr. and led him out through the highly secured exit reserved for presidents and drove him around to as far as Laguna before being transferred to a group of policemen.

But even when he was delivered to the sanctuary of the La Salle Green Hills school shortly before midnight of Tuesday, the group of policemen in plainclothes, who included a Colonel Mascarinas, put him under tight guard, preventing him from talking and moving freely, until he was able to hold his press conference early on Thursday morning and was fetched by the security men from the Senate, which had summoned him in its investigation of the $329 million ZTE-NBN project.

Mascarinas would regularly check on him in his room at the La Salle Brother's House, and sat in a van outside the dormitory while four to six members of the Police Security and Protection Office of the Philippine National Police kept vigil at the lobby.

And asserting his authority, Mascarinas took him out of the La Salle dormitory on Wednesday to a restaurant in Libis, Quezon City, to sign various documents that would belie his abduction and knowledge on the overpricing and bribery in the ZTE project.

Lozada made this assertion about the role of military men and policemen in his abduction on the eve of the Senate's resumption of its investigation into the bribes and overpricing in the $329-million National Broadband Network contract awarded to China's ZTE Corp.

Lozada said he knew the men who took him from the airplane tube were soldiers from their haircut, and the way they moved and talked, because he was familiar with them when he served Gen. Victor Corpus at the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines before he became CEO of Philforest.

"I was surrounded by soldiers and I know how soldiers speak," Lozada said in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer and GMA 7 on Saturday night.

"They were soldiers, and only they have access to the route reserved for presidents because according to (former President Corazon) Aquino she used that route when she was President," Lozada said.

Lozada said that when Aquino visited him earlier on Saturday, he told her how he was abducted the moment he stepped out of the plane from Hong Kong.

"(They took me) the moment I stepped out of the plane, ibig sabihin siga 'yung mga 'yon (it shows that they were powerful) because nobody can get that close and they even took me in the route used by presidents," he said. Lozada quipped it was the first time he got such a "VIP" reception.

When asked if he thought the men could be members of the Presidential Security Group, who were seen in the airport during his arrival, Lozada said they could be.

Lozada's wife Violeta explained that she and her family still filed the petition for habeas corpus and writ of amparo on Wednesday even if he had been reunited with them in La Salle on Tuesday night because the policemen refused to leave.

"Because last Tuesday night when he was brought here, he had company. There were policemen with him and he is not free. Because when you say he was brought here, they (policemen) should have left but not. They brought him here but they gave instructions that they will take him again the next day so that means they will still do something to him," Violeta told the Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net).

She said the policemen did not leave the La Salle premises until after Lozada's press conference in the wee hours of Thursday.

She and a La Salle brother confirmed that Mascarinas kept watch over Lozada at the dormitory. Lozada's sister Carmen said Mascarinas checked on Lozada in his room.

Lozada was considered a key witness in the scandal because he served as technical consultant of Romulo Neri, then the chief of the National Economic and Development Authority who approved the project.

In his first appearance in the Senate on Friday, Lozada linked Environment Secretary Lito Atienza and other Palace officials to his abduction and attempts to cover-up the involvement of ranking personalities in the ZTE scam, including President Macapagal-Arroyo's husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, and former Commission on Elections Chair Benjamin Abalos Sr.

Lozada recounted his horror when the men forcibly took him from the plane and drove him till nighttime in Laguna. He recalled that Atienza instructed him to go straight to the immigration counter upon his arrival with the assurance that he would not be arrested despite a warrant from the Senate.

Atienza told him he spoke to Immigration Commissioner Marcelino Libanan

"I was told I will not be held at the immigration even if there is an arrest warrant so I was happy with that but then as soon as I stepped out of the plane, men took me away,'' he said.

"I was scared, I thought I (would be killed). I didn't know them and when I asked them who they were they just said "Sir, pinapakuha ka sa amin,' [Sir, somebody wants you fetched]" he said.

"It was still daytime. I asked the men where we were going, they refused to answer. I asked for their names, they declined. So I was afraid why the six men were not answering my questions. Then we were on our way to Dasmarinas (Cavite), I called on all saints because I remembered (Bubby) Dacer," he recalled. (Bubby Dacer was the public relations man abducted and killed in 2000 on his way to a meeting with opposition forces against then President Joseph Estrada.)

While he was being driven, Atienza called him to tell him to just go with the men because they were "our" people, and assured him he (Atienza) had just been talking with "ES" and "Ma'am." When asked who the ES and Ma'm were, Lozada said they could have been Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, respectively.

But then he thought: "If these are our people, if they are fetching me, they should have whisked me away and brought me home. But they are driving me farther and farther away and they didn't even introduce themselves," Lozada recalled.

Neri then called him up to ask him to ask his wife to calm down as she had been crying all over the radio, looking for him.

Then one of his escorts got a call and told the driver to bring him back because there was too much noise about his disappearance in the media.

"I owe my life to you the media. Please tell your colleagues," Lozada said.