BIR gets bomb threat targeting exec who survived QC ambush

Three weeks after a Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) official survived an ambush in Quezon City, a bomb threat addressed to the same official was received by the agency on Friday.

The threat, made by an anonymous male caller around 9:20 a.m., prompted a three-hour sweep by the city police, which turned out to be negative.

Insp. Noel Sublay, head of the Quezon City Police District’s explosives and ordnance division, said the call was received through a local line by a BIR employee and was directed at lawyer Daniel de Jesus, chief of the bureau’s Internal Investigation Division (IID).

According to the employee, Sublay said, the caller first asked if De Jesus was around: “Sabihin mo sa kanya na ’di pa kami tapos. Tigilan niya kami sa Customs. May itinanim kaming bomba diyan. (Tell him we’re not yet done. Leave us alone at Customs. We planted a bomb there.)”

On the night of May 8, the BIR official was driving home in his Toyota Innova when he came under attack by motorcycle-riding gunmen on East Avenue. He was hit in the right shoulder but still managed to drive himself to a nearby hospital after the assailants fled.

The case investigator, PO2 Jogene Hernandez, said he had yet to come up with a suspect or a motive for the ambush, noting that De Jesus had since refused to talk at length about it for fear of his life.

The official also took a leave of absence after the incident and had yet to return to work, said Supt. Limuel Obon, commander of the QCPD’s Kamuning station.