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Sunday, October 02, 2005
2 ‘Palace operatives’ nabbed
By Oscar C. Pineda
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
Two armed men claiming to be Malacañang intelligence operatives were arrested Friday afternoon inside a construction site in Barangay Poblacion, Lapu-Lapu City.
Someone had called the police to report their presence. When police arrived at the site on Dimataga St., the two were still there.
Intelligence chief SPO1 Honorato Tano said suspects Juanito Mojado Abella, 38, and Rizaldy Acot Atutubo, 47, are both Philippine Army reservists.
Recovered from them were three handguns with no valid documents.
Security ID
Abella was carrying a .45 pistol with two loaded magazines. He also had an ID that bears the title “Office of the President, National Security Council, Taskforce Car-Cer.” It was signed by Chief Supt. Romeo Maganto.
Atutubo had with him a .38 revolver with no serial number.
Police had to pick up the third gun, an unloaded .38 revolver, which Atutubo allegedly threw upon his arrest. The gun was not loaded.
Abella and Atutubo are detained in the police stockade, while police prepare illegal possession of firearms and ammunition case against them.
Residents earlier called police to report the presence of armed men in the construction site.
Suspected robbers
The building’s ground floor has already been completed and is occupied by a pawnshop.
Tano and his team immediately responded, fearing the armed men were robbers scouting the pawnshop.
When police arrived around 3 p.m., the suspects immediately climbed up to the building’s second floor.
Workers at the site told police they didn’t know the two.
Tano said he was suspicious of the suspects, even if they claimed they were intelligence operatives, because they reeked of liquor.
January arrests
This was not the first time armed civilian agents, suspected of illegally carrying firearms, were arrested and detained in Lapu-Lapu City.
Last January, police raided the house of Marvin Villacorta Francisco, a military asset, and recovered a loaded .45 pistol and the several ammunitions.
They arrested Francisco even if he showed a memorandum receipt and mission order signed by Maj. Jose Gany Galanza of the Military Intelligence Group 7.
In the later part of the same month, police also arrested another Malaca-ñang asset for possession of a loaded .45 pistol at a checkpoint.
Questionable receipt
The suspect was Wilmer Cahentong Capunong, 30, of the Presidential Anti-Illegal Recruitment Task Force (PAIRTF).
Capunong showed a memorandum receipt for the gun, issued by Deputy Regional Director Cecilio Garcia and property custodian Marilyn Bandolon.
But Lapu-Lapu City Police Chief Louie Oppus said memorandum receipts are only issued to “organic members” of a law enforcement unit, not to civilians.
Capunong’s PAIRTF ID bears the signature of Reynaldo Haylo.
(October 2, 2005 issue)
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