Albayalde seeks dismissal of raps over ‘ninja cops’ op

Resigned Philippine National Police chief Police General Oscar Albayalde asked the Department of Justice to dismiss criminal complaints filed against him in connection with a controversial operation by his men when he was Pampanga police chief.

The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group added Albayalde as a new respondent in a complaint against 13 policemen allegedly involved in drug recycling that prosecutors were ordered to reinvestigate.

He faces a complaint for misappropriating confiscated drugs in violation of the dangerous drugs law, graft, falsifying public documents, and failing to prosecute the policemen involved in an allegedly anomalous operation in 2013. 

In his counter-affidavit, Albayalde said the complaint was “insufficient in form and substance” and lacked probable cause.

He said the basis of his inclusion in the complaint, a “partial committee report” by the Senate committees that investigated the operation, “has not been signed or approved by a majority of all committee members as required by Senate rules.”

The document, he said, is “a mere scrap of paper that is unsigned, unverified, and unauthorized by the Senate’s own rules.”

Albayalde also denied that he had called Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency chief and former Central Luzon police chief Aaron Aquino and former CIDG official Rudy Lacadin to influence them regarding the administrative cases against the 13 so-called “ninja cops.”

He said both men were his upperclassmen at the Philippine Military Academy. —KG, GMA News