Gordon to seek documentation on prison deaths, Risa files reso

T& Joel R. San Juan

HE chairman of the Senate Justice committee will ask prisons officials to provide relevant data and materials documenting the deaths of high-profile inmates, as more senators joined Senate President Vicente Sotto III’S call for an inquiry.

At the same time, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Wednesday said the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Corrections (Bucor) will work on improving existing protocols on handling deaths inside the country’s penal facilities.

Speaking at a pre-state of the Nation Address (Sona) press briefing, Guevarra admitted that current protocols are quite “inadequate.”

The DOJ chief said: “You know when the Bucor people presented to us their protocols we noted that these are somehow inadequate. So this will be the subject of further discussion, how to improve their protocols in case death among prisoners.”

Sen. R isa Hontiveros on Wednesday joined Sotto in calling for an inquiry into Covid deaths of highprofile inmates in the New Bilibid Prisons. The nine deaths among the 21 Covid-infected prisoners included four Chinese drug convicts and Jaybee Sebastian, who had testified in Congress that thenjustice Secretary Leila de Lima had abetted the drug trade among inmates like him, supposedly to raise funds for her Senate run in 2016. She won, but was jailed in 2017 on drug-related charges she insists constitute political persecution.

Sotto earlier asked the Committee on Justice, chaired by Richard Gordon to spearhead the upcoming probe.

On Wednesday, Gordon expressed readiness to mount an inquiry, saying he will ask Bucor officials to provide Senate probers with relevant data and produce pictures, closed-circuittelevision (CCTV) footage and medical health certificates of affected inmates to quell speculations these were not staged deaths.

In filing Senate Resolution 473, Hontiveros said she found it “baffling how Covid-19 was able to wipe out several drug lords with one blow.”

The Hontiveros Resolution noted that Bucor itself had earlier confirmed that drug convict Jaybee Sebastian, along with eight other high-profile inmates, succumbed to Covid-19, adding that their remains were immediately cremated at Panteon de Dasmariñas Public Cemetery in Cavite.

The others are Benjamin Marcelo, Zhang Zhu Li, Jimmy Kinsing Hung, Francis Go, Jimmy Yang, Eugene Chua, Ryan Ong, and Amin Imam Buratong, convicted of running the “drug tiangge” in Pasig City.

Hontiveros’s Senate Resolution No. 473 cited that the alleged corruption inside Bucor as revealed in previous Senate investigations, “including cases of ‘Good Conduct Time Allowance [GCTA] for Sale’ and other schemes in which highranking officials of the Bureau would dispense favors to rich inmates, in exchange for monetary consideration, noting these ‘cast a cloud of doubt over said deaths and seemingly secretive and immediate disposal of remains.”

According to Hontiveros, “the lack of reliable information on the deaths of the inmates, the track record of some officials within the Bucor, and the improbability of the fatality rate, creates enough doubt in the mind of a reasonable person on the truthfulness of these deaths.” On the fatality rate, she wondered aloud how nearly half of the Covid-infected inmates died, when the average death rate for Covid in the country is just 2 percent.

NBI probe

DOJ chief Guevarra earlier ordered the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to look into the inmates’ deaths.

The Bucor initially refused to confirm the death of Sebastian and the others, prompting speculations that they were actually freed or summarily executed.

“So many stories have been swirling around that seems to dispute that the cause of death of these convicted drug offenders was Covid-19. In fact there are theories that they did not die and so forth and so on, and that the bodies have already been replaced by someone else and they were let go. Because of these various theories and also for the benefit of the Bucor, to dispel any doubt that there was an anomaly over these deaths allegedly due Covid-19, we thought it proper and prudent to request the NBI to make its own inquiry into the matter,” Guevarra said.