Edgar Angel
MANILA, Philippines—The alleged gunman in the killing of international car racer Ferdinand “Enzo” Pastor failed to get himself off the hook after withdrawing his confession and claiming torture at the hands of the Quezon City police.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday approved the filing of a murder charge against P02 Edgar Angel of the Pasay City police, saying his recantation and the motive behind it would still have to be examined in court.
In a resolution, state prosecutor Susan Villanueva said Angel’s turnaround did not necessarily invalidate his two extrajudicial affidavits admitting he was the hit man hired to shoot Pastor for P100,000 and implicating the victim’s widow Dalia and her alleged lover Domingo “Sandy” de Guzman in the plot.
Whichever of these conflicting testimonies tells the truth is best determined in a full-blown trial, Villanueva said in a resolution dated Sept. 12 and released on Thursday upon the approval of Prosecutor General Claro Arellano.
The ruling was welcomed at the Quezon City Police District (QCPD), which currently has Angel in its custody. “We have always been confident that he would be indicted for Enzo’s killing despite his retraction,” said Chief Insp. Rodel Marcelo, head of the QCPD’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit.
“We’re morally convinced that his first statement was the truth,” Marcelo said.
Villanueva explained that “taking guidance from settled jurisprudence, recantations do not necessarily cancel an earlier declaration. Like any other testimony, it is subject to the test of credibility based on the relevant circumstances. If a previous confession of an accused were to be rejected simply because the latter subsequently makes another confession, all that an accused would do to acquit himself would be to make another confession out of harmony with the previous one.”
“For the previous statements to be set aside, it must be carefully compared with the latter statement, the circumstances under which each was given (and) the reasons or motives for the change carefully scrutinized,” she added.
But DOJ dismissed for lack of evidence the frustrated murder complaint against Angel. The second complaint concerned Pastor’s assistant, Paolo Salazar, who was in a vehicle with his boss when they were ambushed by a masked gunman on the motorbike on the night of June 12 in Quezon City.
Villanueva pointed out the QCPD’s failure to present a medical certificate showing the extent of injuries suffered by Salazar, who was initially reported in the media as having sustained a gunshot wound in the abdomen.
Originally arrested by the QCPD for alleged drug peddling on Aug. 23, Angel executed two extrajudicial statements on Aug. 26 and 27 while in detention and in the presence of a lawyer from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. He then claimed that Dalia and De Guzman, a businessman, hired him to kill Pastor and recalled the events leading to the ambush.
On Sept. 8, however, Angel recanted his confession in a third affidavit, saying he was framed in a “staged” drug bust, and then tortured and blackmailed into admitting his role in Pastor’s killing. He said he signed the two previous affidavits “under duress.”
Still, Villanueva maintained that the extrajudicial confession was “on its face presumed valid.” Angel was informed of his rights as a crime suspect and even allowed himself to be interviewed on national TV, where he affirmed his story and even justified what he did, the prosecutor added.
“The presumption of voluntariness weighs heavily on him because to begin with, he is not an ordinary individual in contemplation of the law. He is an active member of the Philippine National Police who has been exposed to and is presumably aware of the effects and consequences of his extrajudicial confessions.”
The DOJ is conducting separate preliminary investigations into the murder and frustrated murder complaints against De Guzman and Dalia, both of whom have yet to submit counter-affidavits in view of Angel’s recantation.
De Guzman, who was arrested by the QCPD with the help of Angel, was eventually allowed to post bail in connection with the charge for illegal possession of firearms. The DOJ has declared Dalia a “person of interest,” putting immigration officials on alert in case she leaves the country.
The murder case against Angel is set to be filed in the Quezon City Regional Trial Court. With a report from Erika Sauler