Enrile has goods on Aquino–Napeñas

Retired SAF chief Getulio Napeñas. Photo by Yuji Vincent Gonzales/INQUIRER.net

Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile had “basis” for claiming that President Aquino knew about and was monitoring the police operations in Mamasapano and did nothing to save the 44 Special Action Force (SAF) commandos from being massacred, according to the retired SAF chief Getulio Napeñas.

“But let us not preempt it. Let’s just wait for the hearing,” said Napeñas who admitted to having met and talked with Enrile ahead of the Jan. 27 revived inquiry into the tragic police operation in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, that ended with the killing of 44 SAF troopers by Muslim rebels belonging to the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.

Napeñas, who is running for the Senate under Vice President Jejomar Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance, would not reveal what he and Enrile talked about last week, only saying that they did not go into “specifics.” He said he had brought his lawyer to the “short meeting.”

He said the meeting took place before Enrile told the plenary on Monday that he had evidence to show the extent of Mr. Aquino’s involvement in the Mamasapano operation.

Enrile confirmed his meeting with Napeñas but was equally mum about details. “(I met Napeñas) because I checked some facts,” he told reporters.

Interviewed in Caloocan City where he accompanied Binay in a visit there Wednesday, Napeñas said he had no firsthand information on who Enrile talked to about his new information.

But he told the crowd that had come to see the Binay party that the President “had full knowledge” of the police operation and that Mr. Aquino had entrusted the then suspended national police chief, Gen. Alan Purisima, to handle it.

Enrile earlier said that he had witnesses volunteering to testify at the reopening of the Mamasapano inquiry but that he did not need these witnesses because his evidence was more than enough.

Malacañang Wednesday said that the government had given “extensive assistance” to the families of the 44 police SAF commandos killed in Mamasapano.

Presidential Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said that “all mandatory benefits” for the SAF commandos’ next of kin had already been released by the Philippine National Police  and the National Police Commission by April 2015.

“As directed by President Aquino who talked with the families in Camp Bagong Diwa and Camp Crame on two occasions last year, all concerned government agencies have acted on requests received from the families,” he said in a statement.

The assistance received by the SAF 44 families was “unprecedented,” according to Palace sources, noting that even extended families, not just the next of kin, were included in the benefits.

Aside from the mandatory benefits, the SAF 44 families also received housing and livelihood, and other related assistance from government, they said.