IT was former police Senior Superintendent Michael Ray Aquino who gave the order to “get” publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer, who was kidnapped along with his driver Emmanuel Corbito on Nov. 24, 2000 and found dead days later.
A four-page affidavit executed on March 1, 2007 by former police Senior Superintendent Cezar Mancao II, who will be extradited soon to the Philippines in connection with the double murder, said this information came from Teofilo Vina, also an ex-senior superintendent.
Mancao, who had investigated the killings, said he understood Vina’s statement to mean that Aquino had ordered Vina to “neutralize” Dacer.
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said Monday he has a more recent affidavit issued by Mancao.
Download documents obtained from the U.S. courts:
- Cezar Mancao’s March 1, 2007 affidavit
- Glane “Glenn” Dumlao’s March 2, 2007 affidavit
- Mancao’s consent to extradition
- Mancao’s extradition order
- Dumlao’s extradition order
Mancao also said Aquino had blamed Vina for “sloppily dumping Dacer’s car into a ravine in Cavite where it was easily discovered.” Vina was gunned down in Cavite in 2003.
In his affidavit, Mancao quoted another former police officer, Glane “Glenn Dumlao,” as saying that Aquino had issued “illegal orders.” Mancao said he took Dumlao’s statement to mean “conspiring” in the kidnap-murder.
Like Mancao, Dumlao will be extradited for the killings. Dumlao’s extradition was certified by New York District Judge Kathleen Tomlinson last Dec. 9 while Mancao was ordered turned over to the U.S. Marshals for extradition to Manila by Florida District Judge Lurana S. Snow on March 3.
An extradition treaty signed by the Philippines and the U.S. on Nov. 13, 1994 took effect on Nov. 22, 1996.
At the time of the Dacer-Corbito slayings, Aquino, Mancao, Vina and Dumlao were all officials of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF), which was formed in 1998 by then President Joseph Estrada and headed by police Director General and now senator Panfilo Lacson.
Aquino was PAOCTF chief of operations; Mancao, chief of Task Force Luzon; Vina, chief of Task Force Visayas; and Dumlao, deputy chief of operations of Task Force Luzon.
Mancao’s affidavit did not name Estrada or Lacson as having had a hand in the murder.
But Mancao said Lacson advised him and Aquino to leave for the United States after he (Lacson) was elected in May 2001. Lacson reportedly feared that the Arroyo administration would go after Aquino and Mancao to destroy his reputation and ruin his presidential bid in 2004.
Mancao said he left on July 1, 2001 for Hong Kong where he met up with Aquino and flew to the U.S. He settled in Florida while Aquino lived in New Jersey.
He said he and Aquino met Lacson several times in the U.S.—in Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Miami—between October 2001 and September 2003.
Mancao said he heard Lacson instruct Aquino in one meeting to look for real estate properties in the name of First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo. He said the senator was “unsatisfied” with the documents Aquino later turned up and told him to keep looking.
On July 17, 2007, Aquino was sentenced to six years and four months in prison by a U.S. court after he pleaded guilty to illegal possession of classified U.S. documents about President Gloria Arroyo he supposedly helped Leandro Arangocillo transmit to Estrada and Lacson.
Aragoncillo, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation intelligence analyst, was convicted of spying against the U.S. and drew a 10-year jail term.
In a four-page handwritten affidavit executed on March 2, 2007, Dumlao said he arrived in Los Angeles on May 22, 2003 and decided to overstay because “I feared and still fear, that if and when I return to the Philippines, I would again be subjected to psychological and physical torture, and/or worse, be killed by people connected to the present Philippine government.”
He denied any active participation in the kidnapping and murder of Dacer and Corbito. He said the tactical interrogation he conducted at the time was part of his regular duty, having been instructed to do so by Aquino “for a person involved in unseating a duly elected president.”
He said he issued the affidavit to “reiterate and describe efforts by certain Philippine government officials to threaten, coerce and intimate me into falsely implicating their political opponents in order to stymie them in their political career.” He did not name names.
Mancao, a graduate of the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1986, first worked with Aquino (PMA Class ’88) in 1993 in dismantling the criminal syndicate called the Red Scorpion Group. Mancao was then with the Philippine National Police while Aquino was with Presidential Anti-Crime Commission headed by Lacson.
The two would work again in the operation that led to purported rubout of robbers belonging to the Kuratong Baleleng Group. The two, together with Lacson, were cleared of the charges.
Both Mancao and Aquino were again part of Special Project Alpha in 1997 and worked under Lacson who would also be their boss when the PAOCTF was formed a year later. — Yvonne T. Chua