Assassinated broadcaster Percy Lapid VIDEOGRAB FROM FACEBOOK PAGE OF PERCY LAPID FIRE
MANILA, Philippines — The confessed gunman in the Oct. 3, 2022, assassination of broadcaster Percival “Percy Lapid” Mabasa was sentenced on Monday to a maximum of 16 years in prison, the fifth among several accomplices — but no mastermind to date — to be found guilty of the crime.
Mabasa’s family said their quest for justice in the radio commentator’s death, the second of four media killings under the Marcos administration, would not rest until the leaders of the murder plot were punished.
“[Our] pursuit of justice won’t cease until all the masterminds are behind bars,” the victim’s brother, journalist Roy Mabasa, said in a message to the Inquirer.
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Joel Escorial was convicted of homicide after he entered into a plea bargain that allowed him to plead guilty to a lesser offense in exchange for disclosing information about the murder, the Mabasa family’s lawyer, Danny Pelagio, told the Inquirer by telephone.
Judge Harold Cesar Huliganga of the Las Piñas City Regional Trial Court Branch 254 handed down the decision imposing on Escorial the penalty of reclusion temporal, whose minimum term is eight years and eight months of imprisonment, with a maximum of 16 years.
A copy of the decision was not immediately available at press time.
According to Pelagio, Escorial had entered a guilty plea “as an accomplice” to the assassination allegedly plotted by the principals, including dismissed Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director General Gerald Bantag, who remains in hiding since being charged with the double murder of Mabasa and prisoner Cristito “Jun Villamor” Palaña, one of the alleged “middlemen.”
Palaña was found dead inside New Bilibid Prison on Oct. 18, 2022, after Escorial had turned himself into the authorities and confessed to killing Mabasa.
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P550,000 contract
At a press conference, Escorial implicated a number of people, including a Bilibid inmate later identified as Palaña, who allegedly served as an intermediary in a purported P550,000 contract to kill the radio journalist.
When Palaña’s body was discovered shortly after Escorial’s confession, prison authorities, led at the time by Bantag, claimed that the inmate had died of natural causes.
But an independent autopsy conducted by forensic pathologist Raquel Fortun showed that Palaña might have died of suffocation from a plastic bag placed over his head. Based on Fortun’s findings, the body had signs of asphyxia, pulmonary congestion, edema and hemorrhage.
Another alleged mastermind, Bantag’s former deputy, Jail Senior Supt. Ricardo Zulueta had also evaded arrest for the double murder case, but he died in a hospital in Dinalupihan town, Bataan province, on March 15.
The Philippine National Police ruled out foul play in Zulueta’s death, the cause of which was reported to be cerebrovascular disease intracranial hemorrhage or bleeding in the head, although an earlier police report stated heart failure.
‘Lapid Fire’ program
Mabasa’s brother Roy said the prosecution requested DNA testing of Zulueta to ascertain his identity
“After that, the judge will issue an order regarding it,” he told the Inquirer.
A tough-talking critic of former President Rodrigo Duterte and the policies and officials of the Marcos administration, the 63-year-old Percival Mabasa was shot twice in the head while driving to his studio in Las Piñas City to broadcast his “Lapid Fire” program on dwBL radio station, which was also live streamed on YouTube and Facebook.
Among the many personalities he criticized on his show was Bantag, who denied any involvement in the killing during a radio interview on Oct. 26, weeks after Mabasa’s death.
Joel Escorial
In March 2023, a Department of Justice (DOJ) panel of prosecutors indicted several persons in the Mabasa and Palaña killings, including Bantag and Zulueta, who were charged with murder on two counts.
They were named “principals by inducement.”
The DOJ said that on the part of Bantag, there was “sufficient circumstantial evidence” to establish that he masterminded Mabasa’s assassination.
Other accomplices
Escorial was not the first to be convicted in the case.
In June 2023, three Bilibid gang leaders, Aldrin Galicia, Alvin Labra and Alfie Peñaredonda, were found guilty as accessories in Mabasa’s murder and sentenced to a maximum of eight years in prison. In December, Denver Mayores received a similar sentence as another accessory to the crime.
Mabasa’s killing drew widespread condemnation and a renewed focus on deadly attacks faced by journalists in the Philippines, considered one of the most dangerous countries for media workers.
According to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, Mabasa was the second media practitioner to be killed during the Marcos administration since the death of radio host Rey Blanco on Sept. 18, 2022.
Other cases of media attack since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. assumed office included the murder of radio journalist Cresenciano Bunduquin, who was killed in Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro, on May 31, 2023. Another radioman, Juan Jumalon, also known as DJ Johnny Walker, was killed in Calamba, Misamis Occidental, on Nov. 5, 2023, while his show was on air. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH