Thursday, June 19, 2008
Ambush suspect wants out of NBI custody
THE man accused of killing lawyer Richard William Sison is adopting what courts have repeatedly described as weak defenses—denial and alibi.
But security guard Nemuel Camay Sumabong is adamant and has once again challenged the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to subject him to a polygraph.
He asked the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor yesterday to order his release from NBI custody. According to his lawyer, Wendell Quiban, there was no probable cause to charge him under inquest investigation.
Sumabong’s detention only became legal, he added, when Sumabong signed a waiver of detention, a requirement when one invokes his right to preliminary investigation.
Quiban submitted a motion recalling the waiver.
The NBI, however, opposed it citing a technicality—it was Quiban who signed the motion and not the client.
Personal
“Verily, this office does not see any viable course of action relating thereto as it is not the honorable counsel who is under detention. Waiver of rights is personal in nature and cannot be delegated in as much as one cannot delegate somebody else to go to jail in his or her behalf,” the NBI said.
In his counter-affidavit to the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor, Sumabong maintained how his employer, the King David Security and Investigation Agency, detailed him to the Gochan Building at the corner of Leon Kilat and Magallanes St. since May 1, 2008.
He kept that post, taking the 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift, until NBI operatives came and arrested him last June 10, he said.
Sison was shot dead along M.J. Cuenco Ave. around noon of May 21. Sumabong said it was even while on duty that he heard about what had happened to Sison.
He narrated how he noticed Felix Gochan crying that day and he learned from Gochan’s security escort that Atty. Sison was the lawyer for the family.
“After I assisted Felix Gochan negotiate his Isuzu pick-up to the busy road outside of the building, I went back and resumed talking about the ambush of Atty. Sison together with the employees inside the Gochan building,” he said.
Recognition
Sumabong also narrated the circumstances behind his arrest and demonstrated how the NBI, who claimed that his description matched their sketch of the killer, was not even able to identify him.
The NBI, he said, went to his neighborhood looking for a certain Lemuel, a PCI Bank security guard who owed somebody P6,000. Sumabong said he then went with the agent to help them search and when no Lemuel could be found, he offered that his name was Nemuel and that he was also a security guard, albeit he had no debt.
It was at that point when he was taken into custody.
He said he was brought to the NBI regional headquarters and was told that he matched the sketch the agency had of the suspected killer.
“I was submitted to a line-up and, immediately thereafter, the NBI agents told me that I was positively identified by two eye-witnesses while at the same time advising me to admit the crime so they can use me as a state witness, which I readily refused since I have no participation in the crime,” he said. (KNR)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 19, 2008 issue)
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