Arturo Lascañas’ flight, plight

Retired SPO3 Arturo Lascañas, a self-confessed Davao Death Squad (DDS) hitman who implicated President Rody Duterte in the group’s executions, scurried away to Singapore on April 8 amid worries over his safety.

A DDS hitman also fears for his life and chose to be safe in a foreign country. He could only hope no one would find him there.

*** Lascañas said it would take a long time before he could return to the Philippines.

“I am sure, I might either be jailed or killed. It’s just one of the two possibilities. But for me, I know God has a plan and that would be my destiny for telling the truth. I have accepted that,” Lascañas said.

The only problem was that most of the senators in the Senate hearing on the DDS didn’t believe him.

*** Sen. Panfilo Lacson has asked which group was financing Lascañas and his family’s trip and accommodations “in an expensive place like Singapore.”

Lacson said he knew Lascañas’ plight and had no intention of questioning his action. “Anybody who feels persecuted and physically threatened is entitled to make a personal decision on self-preservation,” he said.

He only asked who was funding Lascañas, he said, “in the context of an obvious destabilization effort against President Duterte since nobody seems to admit being involved in the scheme.”

*** Lacson himself slipped out of the country in 2010 shortly before a Manila judge ordered his arrest for his alleged role in the murders of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in 2000.

Lacson said he fled so his enemies and detractors wouldn’t have “the pleasure of seeing me behind bars even for a second for a crime I did not commit.”

He flew back home unannounced from Hong Kong in March 2011 after 14 months in hiding. No one questioned who financed his travels.

A DDS hitman also fears for his life and chose to be safe in a foreign country. He could only hope no one would find him there