De Lima relieves prison chief, 3 senior jail officials for grenade attack

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Justice Secretary Leila De Lima ordered the relief of New Bilibid Prison (NBP) Superintendent Ramon Reyes and other senior jail officers in a surprise ocular inspection at last week’s grenade blast site in the NBP’s maximum security compound in Muntinlupa City on Monday morning.

De Lima placed Reyes with medium security compound head Dante Cruz, Roberto Rabo and Gerardo Aro, minimum security superintendent and supervisor respectively on “floating status.”

Junior officers, whom De Lima described as more “aggressive,” will replace the relieved officers. In the meantime, the justice secretary asked NBP officer-in-charge Manuel Co to oversee the operations at the detention facility.

The relieving of the senior officials from their posts came after the probe of the grenade blast, which injured six inmates on Friday morning and which, De Lima claimed, has “compromised the reputation” of Reyes and other superintendents.

The NBP superintendent said that he would accept the decision of De Lima to replace them and other officials with junior officers.

“If that is the discretion of our superior, we can do nothing about it,” Reyes said and added that he and the other relieved officers would not appeal to the justice secretary regarding her decision.

In a surprise visit to the prison on Monday morning, De Lima told the media that it remained a mystery to her how the grenade was smuggled into the highly guarded compound along with other deadly weapons and firearms, which were recovered from the prisoners in an inspection after the blast.

Reyes earlier claimed that despite their intensified operations against contraband, inmates were still able to smuggle weapons into the prison by “conspiring and bribing” some jail employees.

“There are really some employees who trade a request for a sum of money but majority of our officers here are hardworking and honest,” Reyes said.

Reyes also noted that they have done their best to beef up security at the facility with stricter body searches and inspections.

“But sometimes we admit we have lapses and our efforts do not match the expectation of our boss,” the NBP superintendent said. “We are doing our best to improve our security measures and address our shortcomings. Hindi kami nakaupo at natutulog lang sa aming mga mesa (We’re not just sitting around and sleeping on the job),” Reyes added.

He also said that his 228 men at the maximum security compound have been tasked with a tough responsibility of watching over more than 13,000 high-profile criminals.

“The ratio here is one guard for every 42 prisoners. We also have more than 7,000 inmates in the medium security and minimum security facilities,” Reyes said.

A CCTV footage of the bomb attack showed the grenade-thrower wearing an orange inmate shirt and covering his head with a towel just a few meters away from the group of joggers before he released the explosive, which targeted and wounded six members of the Batang City Jail gang.

Reyes said there were two witnesses who saw the suspect and positively identified him as a member of the group “Batang Samar Leyte.”

“We have already submitted our report to Secretary De Lima regarding the identity of the suspect pinpointed by the two witnesses. We are just waiting for her to verify the results of the investigation and release the details of the probe on the incident,” Reyes said.

De Lima, on the other hand, ordered the witnesses to undergo a lie-detector test and to submit their description of the suspect to a sketch artist to confirm the true identity of the responsible prisoner.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), according to the justice secretary, has been tasked to enhance the security footage of the blast to have a closer and more detailed look at the perpetrator.

Reyes also noted some officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation who visited the NBP after the attack expressed their willingness to extend technical assistance to the NBI in enhancing the CCTV video of the explosion.

The NBI said it has been looking at a drug-related gang war as the root of the grenade attack.