CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Philippines—Top military commanders in Northern and Central Luzon said they did not know if the Army's 24th Infantry Battalion maintained a detachment in Limay, Bataan, where two farmers claimed they were held and tortured until June 2007.
The brothers Raymond and Reynaldo Manalo also reported seeing missing University of the Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño and Manuel Merino, a farmer, in that detachment in Barangay Bliss in Limay.
The three were reported missing in Hagonoy, Bulacan, in 2006, during the stint of Major General Jovito Palparan Jr. as commander of the Army's 7th Infantry Division in Central Luzon.
The Manalo brothers were abducted in San Ildefonso, Bulacan, also in 2006.
Together with Commission on Human Rights Chair Leila de Lima and Karapatan leaders, Raymond Manalo visited Barangay Bliss on Monday morning to identify the area where he and his brother were detained for six months and where they had seen the three missing persons.
"I would not know about it. The disposition of troops and their camps are on the battalion commanders," said Lieutenant General Isagani Cachuela, chief of the military's Northern Luzon Command, when asked on Tuesday about the existence of a detachment in Barangay Bliss.
Major General Ralph Villanueva, commander of the 7th ID, which has control over the 24th IB, was in the dark as well.
"As of now, wala (I have no knowledge). I really have to find out. I don't have the data right now," Villanueva said in a phone interview from Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija, where the division is based.
He assumed command of the division in April 2008, succeeding Major General Juanito Gomez, Palparan's successor.
Lieutenant Colonel Philip Lapinid, commander of the 24th IB, said the unit had put up a detachment in Barangay Duale, not in Barangay Bliss.
Lapinid said the 24th IB moved to a portion of the Bagac-Mariveles Road to help guard construction activities there at the request of Bataan Governor Enrique Garcia.
The battalion's original camp was in Barangay Sabatan in Orion town.
Lapinid said the previous commander, Colonel Felipe Anotado, told him that the battalion had not established a detachment in Barangay Bliss.
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Anotado said the battalion only put up a detachment in Duale.
He said he never saw or talked to the Manalo brothers during the time they were supposedly held in Bliss.
Anotado ended his tour of duty in Bataan in February 2008.
A man sent by the Inquirer to Duale on Tuesday confirmed the presence of a Cafgu detachment there. The detachment sits on a land owned by a certain Cunanan.
The place is also known among locals as "Bayan-Bayan ng Ita."
Former Bataan Vice Governor Rogelio Roque said the military held camp in Barangay Bliss.
Roque said he knew this because his property and the camp, owned by his neighbor, whom he identified only as Mr. Corpuz, shared a common fence.
Duale and Bliss are different villages. Located on separate hills, the villages are parallel to each other, Roque said.
Garcia said he has no knowledge that a detachment existed either on Bliss or Duale.
"It came as a surprise to me," he said.
Bliss, he said, is a sitio (sub-village) of Duale.
The 24th IB is known among junior officers as a "baby of Palparan." He was its executive officer from 1985 to 1989 when the unit was in Pampanga.
When Palparan returned for his second and last stint in Central Luzon from September 1, 2005 to his retirement on September 11, 2006, the 24th IB was the most mobile and most dispersed among the six battalions. It had troops in northern Zambales, eastern Bataan and southern Pampanga.
