Torture, slay of teener revives talk of death squads

DIGOS CITY—The torture and killing of a 17-year-old high school dropout in a Davao del Sur town has revived talk about vigilantes in the province whose existence officials repeatedly deny but which continued summary executions appear to confirm.

The latest victim was Ryan Cagulada, whose body was found in a grassy portion of the Davao-Cotabato Highway last Tuesday.

He was shot in the head. His body bore torture marks, according to police. His fingernails had been pulled out and two of his fingers had been cut. His hands were tied.

“He was brutally killed,” said Chief Insp. Deozar Almasa, police chief of Bansalan town.

What Ryan did to deserve it wasn’t clear. What is clear is that, according to his parents, he hasn’t had a brush with the law as did other victims of summary executions in the province, some of whom are crime suspects.

Ryan was out of school because of poverty. His mother, Rosalinda, 51, said Ryan nurtured the dream of returning to school as a high school senior next year until Tuesday when his son left home in Bansalan to visit a brother in another town.

“That was the last time I saw him alive,” said Rosalinda.

On Wednesday, Rosalinda was told by a neighbor, who was at a vigil for a dead relative in a funeral home in Bansalan, that a body that was just brought into the morgue looked like her son.

At the funeral home with her husband Eduardo, Rosalinda’s worst fear stared her in the face. Ryan was, indeed, dead.

His body was found by residents of New Clarin, a village in Bansalan, early last Wednesday. Hours before, residents reported hearing gunfire, but no one dared come out to check.

When the sun came up, some residents went to check and found Ryan’s body with a single gunshot wound in the head. Chief Insp. Almaza said he was shot “pointblank.”

Word quickly spread that the Davao Death Squad (DDS), a vigilante group whose existence police are denying, is active again.

DDS has been tagged in a spate of summary executions in the Davao region, mostly of crime suspects, that started in the late 1990s.

The Commission on Human Rights had investigated the killings, saying the deaths of more than 900 people could not be ignored.

Ryan’s case, said one of the people who found his body, could be that of a “mistaken identity.” Orlando B. Dinoy, Inquirer Mindanao