After the Philippine National Police, it’s now the turn of the National Bureau of Investigation to weed out alleged misfits from its ranks.
Beleaguered NBI Director Dante Gierran on Thursday let the ax fall on Ricardo Diaz, the bureau’s head in Metro Manila, after he was implicated in the kidnap-slaying of Korean executive Jee Ick-joo.
Three other senior officials of the NBI, the primary law enforcement unit of the Department of Justice, were also sacked by Gierran in the wake of President Rodrigo Duterte’s outrage over Jee’s killing.
Speaking in Davao City, Mr. Duterte announced that he had ordered the NBI to refrain from conducting anti-illegal drug operations.
He said the drug problem was now regarded as a “national security threat,” which would allow him to deploy soldiers in antidrug operations.
No trust in NBI
“The bureau is suspended from enforcing drug laws. You’re included. I have lost trust in you,” the President said.
He said only the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, headed by his longtime security aide Isidro Lapeña, and the Armed Forces of the Philippines were authorized to carry out drug raids.
“I still have to (issue) a proclamation (or) executive order, but I have taken in the AFP and raise the issue of drugs as a national security threat,” he said. “They can call all the Armed Forces to assist… in the meantime that there will be a cleansing, a purge inside Camp Crame and the NBI,” he continued.
Diaz, a longtime NBI agent, has been accused by Supt. Rafael Dumlao III, one of the primary suspects in Jee’s murder, of having a hand in the incident, which reflected the susceptibility of the President’s merciless drug war to abuses.
Also sacked were Roel Bolivar, the erstwhile head of the NBI Task Force Against Illegal Drugs, who was replaced by his deputy, Jonathan Galicia; NBI-Metro Manila head agent Darwin Lising; and the NBI deputy director for investigative services, Jose Yap.
The NBI deputy director for intelligence, Vicente de Guzman III, took over Yap’s position, while lawyer Sixto Burgos replaced De Guzman.
Joint investigation
According to Gierran, he and PNP Director General Ronald dela Rosa met on Wednesday with Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who had presided over the Senate inquiry into Jee’s murder and other similar cases of “tokhang for ransom.”
He said the PNP and the NBI agreed to create a joint investigation team and cooperate closely in resolving Jee’s case.
Gierran said Medardo Delemos has been tasked to head the NBI team while Senior Supt. Glenn Dumlao, chief of the PNP Anti-Kidnapping Group (AKG), was assigned to lead the police investigators.
Glenn Dumlao was previously indicted in the celebrated kidnapping and murder of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito.
Lacson, then the superior of Glenn Dumlao in the now-defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, was also charged in the Dacer-Corbito double murder case.