Police confirm, defend digging of tunnel in hunt for Quiboloy

FACE OFF Police officials face off with Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KJC) officers and their lawyers during Friday’s Senate hearing, led by Senators Ronald dela Rosa (center), Robinhood Padilla and Christopher “Bong” Go, at the session hall of the Davao City council (upper left). The hearing was part of the probe of alleged abuses in the police operation to arrest fugitive televangelist and KJC leader Apollo Quiboloy (right) and four other sect members inside the KJC compound in Buhangin district that started on Aug. 24. —PHOTO BY JOSELLE R. BADILLA

DAVAO CITY—Failing to find the entrance to the underground bunker where they supposedly detected heartbeats and other signs of life, police dug an underground tunnel in the basement of Jose Maria College (JMC), one of the structures inside the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KJC) compound in Buhangin District here.

Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III, Davao regional police chief, admitted to have ordered the “supervised digging” beginning on Aug. 29, on the fifth day of the operation to arrest fugitive televangelist and KJC leader Apollo Quiboloy and four other KJC members who are his coaccused in child abuse and human trafficking charges.

Senators Ronald dela Rosa and Christopher “Bong” Go, accompanied by KJC members and journalists, found an area that was freshly paved with concrete in the basement of the JMC building when they were allowed by the police to enter the area around 10 a.m. on Friday. The inspection was part of a Senate investigation into alleged abuses in the ongoing arrest operation.

On the 14th day of the police operation to arrest Quiboloy on Friday, the work inside the KJC compound was halted as the Senate committees on justice and human rights and on public order and dangerous drugs held a joint hearing at the session hall of the Davao City council following the “ocular inspection.”

Telltale signs

The discovery at the JMC building confirmed an earlier suspicion by KJC lawyers that the police had been digging underground.

KJC legal counsel Israelito Torreon detailed the telltale signs that there was digging in the JMC building in the past days, including the sound of drilling in the basement, the sighting of civilians believed to be miners that the police brought inside the compound, tunneling equipment being smuggled inside and finally, the discovery of cement being brought inside the compound on Thursday night.

Torre told the Senate committee hearing they were digging a tunnel to the basement to find the underground facility where Quiboloy was believed to be hiding.

Policemen, who have been in the 30-hectare compound for two weeks, or since Aug. 24, had a hard time finding the entrance to the underground facility.

Torre invoked Section 10 of Rule 113 in the Rules of Court that allowed officers of the law to ask the help of civilians in effecting an arrest of a wanted criminal. He also cited Section 11 that authorized the police to break into buildings or facilities if there were strong reasons to believe that the subject of the warrant of arrest was hiding there.

“[We] dug a tunnel because that’s the way for us to break into where we suspect Apollo Quiboloy is hiding. It’s also in relation to Section 11 which gives the officer the right to break into any building or enclosure to effect the arrest,” Torre said.

He described the supposed hiding place of Quiboloy as “end-of-the-world, Armageddon-type bunker which can support life for an extended period of time.”

But Dela Rosa, a former chief of the Philippine National Police, shot back: “Don’t you think you have abused [that particular provision of the law because of the] length of time, 13 days, that you’ve been staying in the KJC compound? Where in the world have you heard that effecting a warrant of arrest [takes] 13 days, [and you’re] staying in one particular place?”

According to Torreon, that particular section of the Rules of Court can be invoked only when making lawful arrest. “You’re about to arrest only one person. It’s not applicable,” he said.

Lawyer Aiza Canda, president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines chapter in Davao said Section 10, Rule 113 of the Rules of Court, applied only when the “officer is actually in the act of making the arrest.”

“He (the officer) may call of course as many assistance as he can but with what’s happening now in the KJC, there are thousands of them inside the compound [and] they are still searching in the vicinity,” Canda said.

‘Continuing operation’

But Department of the Interior and Local Government Undersecretary for Operations Lord Villanueva sided with Torre, saying: “If the PNP has reasonable grounds to believe that indeed the pastor is hiding underground, then the Rules of Court allows the police officers to break into an enclosure. So by that interpretation, breaking in would include tunneling and digging to reach an enclosure where [they believe the pastor is staying].”

Section 10, he said, does not place a limitation as to the period to seek assistance.

“I respectfully disagree with the contention that this would be done at the very moment that the person to be arrested is sighted. It could be done in the process of breaking into the enclosure where the person to be arrested is believed to be found,” Villanueva said.

National Police Commissioner Alberto Bernardo also argued that the arrest of a person who was trying to escape the law was a “continuing operation.” What the police were doing in the JMC basement, he said, can be considered as “furtherance of the arrest.”

He compared it to what happened during the Marawi siege in 2017 in which they employed the same instruments to track down terrorists and save civilians buried in the rubble.

“If a person is trying to escape the law, the police’s response to effect the arrest warrant is a continuing act, so if the police believed that there’s a bunker underground, we can consider what the police were doing as furtherance of the arrest,” he said.