Military bares cops tampered with evidence in Quezon ‘shootout’

In this Jan. 6, 2013, file photo released by the Philippine National Police Quezon Provincial Director’s Office, Quezon provincial police chief Valeriano de Leon, right, looks at a bullet-riddled vehicle at a checkpoint along a road in the town of Atimonan in Quezon province. Security personnel originally claimed the incident as a shootout with suspected criminals, but investigators said the police operation plan carried out by Supt. Hansel Marantan purportedly to neutralize a crime ring was a “mere subterfuge” to kill a competitor in “jueteng.” AP FILE PHOTO/PHILIPPINE NATIONAL POLICE QUEZON PROVINCIAL DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

MANILA, Philippines—The police fired the firearms of the victims in the infamous Quezon shooting incident last January 6 and pumped more bullets into a wounded survivor despite a soldier’s plea to take him to hospital, the members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines told Wednesday the Department of Justice (DOJ) panel handling the case.

In a 58-page joint counter-affidavit, the military officers lamented, however, that their testimony before the National Bureau of Investigation was used against them when in its fact finding report noted that the military never questioned the propriety of the setting up of the checkpoint nor the briefing and subsequent execution of the checkpoint.

The military officers are also facing multiple murder complaint for the death of 13 people in Atimonan, Quezon last Jan. 6.

They said, military augmentation for police checkpoint is normal because of the existing Memorandum of Agreement between the police and the military regarding the conduct of joint check point and joint patrolling.

“As [soldiers], we are merely bound to execute the same as a matter of duty and responsibility,” the military led by Lieutenant Colonel Monico Abang said.

“There was nothing suspicious in the request made by the police that should have aroused our suspicion that our forces were tapped to form part of a concerted effort to perpetrate the commission of any crime. Aside from the sole request for military augmentation, there was no independent indication that the checkpoint will be used to camouflage in any case, the commission of a crime,” the military said in their counter affidavit.

They said the augmentation was made on January 6 and that they do not have time to make further evaluation.

They pointed out that if they were conspiring with the police, they never would have revealed that the police fired the victims’ firearms and shot one of the 13 victims after one of the military personnel called their attention that there was a survivor from one of the SUVs that should be taken to hospital.

If they were conspiring, the military personnel said, “we would not have disclosed what we saw, taking into consideration that the police actions may be considered as our own act.”

“Without the statement of the undersigned respondents that we witnessed police operatives tampering [with] the evidence, by firing the guns of the occupants of the SUV in the air, the NBI would have not learned of this fact,” they said.

But they lamented that the NBI considered such disclosure as against them, “a practical scenario of the famous local quote ‘ginisa sa sariling mantika (we were conned).”

The military told the DOJ panel to dismiss the complaint against them.