De Lima, Gordon call Jolo shooting incident 'rub out, murder'

Several senators on Friday strongly condemned the fatal police shooting incident in Jolo, Sulu that claimed the lives of four military men earlier this week.

Opposition Senator Leila De Lima described it as a "rub out" which she claimed was an "unfortunate and inevitable" consequence of the alleged culture of state-sponsored extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration.

"The power of the PNP (Philippine National Police) to conduct summary executions without any criminal culpability upon Duterte’s orders bred and reared monstrous impunity in the past four years," she said in a statement.

"It was just a matter of time before this police impunity, recognizing no boundaries, would claim as its latest victims even Army troopers who were previously thought to be safe from marauding PNP hit squads," she added.

The detained senator further claimed that the impunity in the country has now reached a level that is never before seen since the Marcos regime.

"AFP (Armed Force of the Philippines) officers can no longer close their eyes to the connection between the blank check given by Duterte to the PNP to summarily execute and the cavalier execution by the PNP of their Army brethren," De Lima said.

"They cannot condemn the murder and honor the death of their men without confronting the bare fact that their own generals were somehow complicit in raising the PNP monster unleashed by Duterte, and which is now devouring their own brothers," she added.

The PNP, which is conducting an internal investigation, said what happened was a "shooting incident," retracting its earlier statement that it was a misencounter.

The four slain soldiers were on an official mission on Monday when the incident happened. The initial police report said cops ordered the military men to proceed to Jolo Municipal Police Station for verification but the soldiers allegedly attempted to escape and pointed their firearms at the police, prodding the latter to shoot.

Enraged Philippine Army chief Lieutenant General Gilbert Gapay, on the other hand, said it was not a case of misencounter but of murder.

The National Bureau of Investigation is currently handling the probe on the incident.

Senator Richard Gordon also decried what transpired between the members of the two state security forces.

"It was not a rub out, it was a clear murder. The four army officers had no guns and I deplore the mendacity and the maliciousness of the police officers which was evidenced in the fact that they tampered with the evidence and the crime scene," he said in a separate statement.

He urged President Rodrigo Duterte to order a "top level investigation" among all generals of the PNP and the AFP.

"There is a need to investigate and determine what is wrong with the policy that incidents such as these occur," Gordon said.

Senator Bong Go, vice chair of the committees on national defense and public order, said the Senate is also ready to investigate the matter to let the truth surface.

"Handa po kaming mag-imbestiga if kakailanganin po. Bagamat di na natin maibabalik ang buhay ay hustisya na lang ang pwede nating maibigay sa ngayon," he said.

A former special assistant to the President, Go said the incident was hard to accept for Duterte.

"Masakit kay Pangulong Duterte ang nangyari. Mahal na mahal po niya ang sundalo. Mahal na mahal po n’ya ang kapulisan. Sabi ko nga sa inyo kahit saang sulok ng Pilipinas kahit madaling araw, binibisita namin ang mga namamatay sa digmaan o drug ops basta nakikipaglaban para sa kapwa Filipino," he said.

Interior Secretary Eduardo Año on Thursday bared that Duterte will be meeting the top officials of the PNP and AFP on the heels of the incident.

Senator Risa Hontiveros also said that ulterior motives in the incident, if there are any, must be brought to the fore.

"If none of the four even fired their firearms once, as according to the AFP report, bakit naman sila ay binaril nang paulit-ulit pa? So it really boggles the imagination. If there was a deeper motive, we should certainly have to uncover it," she said in an interview on CNN-Philippines.

"Kung simpleng coordination problem lang  ito, kung simpleng aksidente lang ito, those will have to be placed under the microscope of the investigations. Napakahirap lang talagang pamiwalaan sa ngayon," she added.

On Thursday, Hontiveros filed a resolution seeking a Senate probe on the incident to institutionalize measures against "excessive use of force and violence within the police force."

Senators Panfilo "Ping" Lacson and Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa both expressed readiness to handle the hearings once the resolution is referred to their committees. --KBK, GMA News