Drug war killings turn grisly: Body parts those of 4 missing

WHAT looks like burnt meat wrapped in plastic sheets is actually the headless, burned corpse, lying on an embalming table, of one of four male residents of Calauag town, Quezon province who are on the police drug watch list. They had gone missing and the search for three of them ended in this morgue. DELFIN T. MALLARI JR./INQUIRER SOUTHERN LUZON

LUCENA CITY—The mutilated bodies and body parts found separately in two towns in Quezon province belonged to four men who had gone missing and had been on the police drug watch list, according to  relatives of the men.

The two-day search for the missing men ended up at a funeral parlor here where their burned severed heads, body parts and charred mutilated corpses had been taken after these were found in the towns of Mulanay and General Luna.

The brutal killings could be the most grisly display of the brutality that has characterized the wave of gangland-style executions being linked to the war on drugs by the Duterte administration.

Relatives of Joel de la Torre, 25; Augosto Leron, 43; Gilbert Pariño Alvarez, 26; and his brother, Gerald, 24, found three of the men’s heads and body parts in Funeraria Pagbilao. Gerald’s remains have yet to be found.

The heads bore bullet wounds. Though severely burned, the relatives were able to identify the heads and body parts as that of Gilbert Alvarez, De la Torre and Leron.

The Calauag police said the four men were on a drug watch list that was updated last month. Their names, however, are not on a previous list prepared in July at the start of the antidrug campaign Oplan Tokhang.

Crisjane Mendoza, live-in partner of De la Torre, said she recognized De la Torre through his dentures.

“Their heads, we were told, were not chopped but got separated from their bodies after they were burned,” said Estrella Alvarez, mother of the Alvarez siblings.

She said the men were summarily executed by policemen.

“They were salvaged (slang for summary execution),” said Estrella. “Do they have to do those horrible acts to them?” she said.

Senior Supt. Antonio Yarra, Quezon provincial police chief, denied it.

“The police will not do that,” Yarra said in a phone interview. “We will stick to our report that the four men went missing,” he said.

Yarra said he had ordered his men to investigate to help give justice to the victims.

Chief Insp. Michael Encio, Calauag police chief, also denied the involvement of his men.

A police report said the victims’ families went to the Calauag police station on Monday to report the disappearance of the four men.

On the same day, Mulanay police found three burnt heads and a charred lower limb separately in the village of Cambuga. On Tuesday, two headless and burnt bodies were found in a steel drum in Barangay San Vicente, General Luna town, 48 km from Mulanay.

The men’s relatives said police are not telling the truth.

Sources, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said the four men were last seen alive on Sunday dawn in Barangay Doña Aurora in Calauag when they and two other men were arrested by policemen and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency agents.

The four men were playing the card game “pusoy” with Ar-Jay Cabrera and Rodante Aday in Aday’s house when the lawmen arrived and surrounded the house.

One of the sources said Cabrera and Aday were killed inside the house.

Estrella Alvarez said the four men were killed because they witnessed the killing of Cabrera and Aday.

The Calauag police, in an official report, said Cabrera and Aday were killed in a gunfight at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday.

Cabrera, according to police, is a high value drug target. Residents of Doña Aurora, however, said no gunfight took place.

“We expected them inside jail and not dead,” said one of the men’s relatives.

Romulo Escalante, Doña Aurora village chair, said De la Torre, Leron and the Alvarez brothers are not on the drug watch list of the village.