Probe of butchered drug suspects starts

A COFFIN is prepared for one of the four residents of Quezon province whose remains were found days after they went missing following a police antidrug operation in the town of Calauag. DELFIN T. MALLARI JR./INQUIRER SOUTHERN LUZON

LUCENA CITY—The Commission on Human Rights has started an investigation of the killings of four drug suspects, whose severed heads and charred body parts were found in separate locations in Mulanay and General Luna towns in Quezon province this week.

The CHR investigation started on Wednesday even as the Quezon provincial police began its own probe of the case.

“I’m calling on the families of the victims and all possible witnesses to submit their formal affidavits to our investigators to help us in our probe,” Senior Supt. Antonio Yarra, Quezon police chief, said on Thursday.

On Tuesday, relatives of Joel de la Torre, 25; Augosto Leron, 43; Gilbert Pariño Alvarez, 26; and his brother, Gerald, 24, who were reported missing in Calauag town on Sunday, ended their search in a funeral parlor here where three heads and body parts found in Mulanay and General Luna were taken.

The heads had 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. Only the remains of Gerald Alvarez have yet to be located.

Senior Insp. Bonna Abuyan-Obmerga, Mulanay police chief, said another corpse was found in her town on Thursday afternoon.

The body was kept inside a sack left under a bridge in Barangay Bagupaye, three kilometers away from Barangay Cambuga, the site where the heads and body parts were found on Monday. Police have yet to identify the body.

The Calauag police said the four men were on its watch list of illegal drug users.

Yarra refuted allegations by the victims’ relatives that they were summarily executed by policemen.

“I understand their emotions because they are still grieving,” he said.

A government source said an atmosphere of fear now prevails in Barangay Doña Aurora in Calauag town, the home village of three victims.

“The families of victims and residents who have personal knowledge of incidents [before they disappeared] were afraid to come out and talk,” said the source, who asked not to be named for lack of authority to issue statements to reporters.

The source said relatives of the victims seemed to be withholding vital information on what really happened before the four men disappeared on Sept. 25.

“But they [provided] common [information]—that two victims of a supposed drug bust … and the four missing men who turned out dead … were simultaneously arrested by policemen in a house in the village at dawn on Sept. 25,” said the source.

Inquirer sources earlier said the four men were last seen alive when they and two other villagers, Ar-Jay Cabrera and Rodante Aday, were arrested by policemen in Barangay Doña Aurora in Calauag.

The six men were playing cards in Aday’s house when the lawmen arrived. The sources said the house was surrounded by police vehicles and armed men in civilian clothes.

In a report, the Calauag police said Cabrera and Aday were killed in a clash with policemen conducting the drug bust at 5:30 a.m. Sunday.

But Chief Insp. Michael Encio, Calauag police chief, clarified that the local police did not join the operation.

Encio, in a telephone interview on Thursday, said the local police’s role was limited to only documentation following the bust.

All information on the operation was supplied by the raiding team from the Quezon police intelligence bureau based in Camp Nakar here, Encio said.