Four days before he was ambushed, Deputy Director Rey Esmeralda of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) told me that he increased the number of his bodyguards because he had received threats.
He told me the threats were in connection with the recent scandal at the NBI that resulted in the dismissal of Director Magtanggol Gatdula.
The people who were implicated in the scandal suspected him of being my source in my exposé of the kidnapping of Noriyo Ohara, a Japanese national, by some NBI agents.
“You should also be careful, Mon. In fact, you should take more precautions than I do,” said Esmeralda.
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On Tuesday night, Esmeralda and his bodyguards were traveling on a road in Paco, Manila, on their way home from the NBI headquarters on Taft Avenue when, from out of nowhere, a motorcycle with two persons on board sidled up to the two-car convoy.
One of the two men on the motorcycle fired at Esmeralda’s car with an M-16 rifle, hitting him and his brother, a Manila policeman assigned to him for his safety.
When I spoke to him hours after the ambush, Esmeralda said he was able to duck at the first volley of gunfire.
He instinctively crouched in the back seat and reached for his submachine gun beside him, but things happened too fast.
His brother, who was in the passenger front seat, was also late in reacting.
The bodyguards in the back-up car didn’t fire at the motorcycle riders for fear of hitting bystanders.
As suddenly as the motorcycle materialized, it disappeared into the rush-hour traffic.
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If a high official of the country’s premier law enforcement agency could be ambushed with impunity, who is safe from bad elements?
If our protectors cannot protect themselves, who will protect ordinary, law-abiding citizens?
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The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has charged two prominent, law-abiding citizens with “knowingly tolerating the commission of illegal activities” in connection with the raid on a house in Ayala Alabang that yielded millions of pesos in illegal drugs.
Aurelio R. Montinola, Bank of the Philippine Islands president, and lawyer Perry L. Pe, honorary consul-general to Denmark, were charged along with the suspected Chinese drug traffickers who leased the house inside the exclusive village.
The PDEA says Montinola and Pe are administrators of the Consuelo P. Madrigal estate which, the agency claims, includes the house.
But the house is no longer part of the Madrigal estate, so how could Montinola and Pe have leased the property which is not under their care?
No wonder PDEA loses big drug cases. It’s careless in filing cases.