House to hold closed-door hearing with SAF survivors

The inquiry of the House of Representatives into the Mamasapano incident will continue on Tuesday in what could be its final hearing behind closed doors with the Special Action Force ( SAF) policemen who survived the bloody operation.

Negros Occidental Rep. Jeffrey Ferrer, chairman of the committee on public order and safety, said the House leadership would try to wrap up the inquiry and resolve a pending motion to subject concerned officials from the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces to polygraph examination or lie detector tests.

Ferrer’s panel and the special committee on peace, reconciliation and unity, chaired by Basilan Rep. Jim Hataman-Salliman, are jointly conducting the inquiry that concluded its three public hearings last week.

“There are still many questions from my colleagues but many or most of them have already been asked and answered, not only in the House but in other bodies, the Senate and the PNP BOI (Board of Inquiry). But there are also a few crucial questions that continue to demand truthful answers up to now,” Ferrer told The STAR.

Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II at the hearing last Tuesday requested that the testimonies of the SAF policemen who survived the Mamasapano firefight be heard in an executive session.

Ferrer appealed to his colleagues asking questions that are more related to the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law to raise them at the resumption of the BBL hearings two weeks from now.

He said the motion of ACTCIS party- list Rep. Samuel Pagdilao to subject the police and military officials to lie detector tests will be resolved during the closed door session. Pagdilao made the motion after noting the conflicting statements of SAF and military officials on the issue of the reason why the reinforcements, particularly the artillery fire, of the Armed Forces Western Mindanao Command was late.

Ferrer said he was personally not in favor of subjecting the police and military officials to lie detector tests because they were invited as resource persons, and not to be interrogated as suspects.

Ferrer said he noticed that PNP officials during the last two public hearings kept referring to the BOI report when answering lawmakers’ various questions, no matter how they were phrased.

“We also noticed that some of the statements of our military officials were changing,” he said, adding the panel will also delve deeper into the issue of the differing maps of the encounter site presented by the SAF and the military.

At the last hearing, the artillery officer of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division said he was not able to immediately direct fire at the attackers of the beleaguered SAF policemen because the map he was using was different from what was shown to him by a PNP officer asking for help.

“It took them (military) 11 hours just to fire artillery, why so? Some members in the joint committee believe somebody gave them an order to stand down. We’ll find out if there’s any truth to that,” Ferrer said.

Western Samar Rep. Mel Senen Sarmiento, for his part, advised relieved SAF commander Director Getulio Napeñas to start acting like a true officer and a gentleman by admitting that he is responsible for the police operation that led to the deaths of 44 of his men.

Sarmiento said Napeñas should also stop dragging other people, including President Aquino, “into his mess.”

“The Mamasapano operation is his (Napeñas) mess. He should stop dragging other people into this because he alone had full control of the operation. He planned the operation and he executed it. Even the people who were involved in the operation were handpicked by him. Gen. Napeñas should man up and start acting like a true SAF commando. Blaming other people for your own mistake is definitely not one of the characteristics of a true SAF officer,” he said.

Sarmiento said Napeñas planned and executed Oplan Exodus, the mission to capture fugitive Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, but it proceeded badly and ended up with the killing of 44 SAF policemen by Muslim rebels.

“Napeñas must accept responsibility. His shortcomings in planning the operation proved fatal and he has nobody to blame but himself. His failure to obey the directives of his commander-in-chief is the proximate cause of the death of the 44 SAF members,” he said.

Sarmiento said it was obvious that Napeñas got too “greedy” to own all the credits in the Mamasapano operation, and this was the reason why he refused to obey a direct order from Aquino for him to coordinate his efforts with his superiors and the Armed Forces.

He said the unquestioned narration of facts stated that the SAF members already killed their target at 4:15 a.m., a fact made known to Napeñas 15 minutes later.

“What prevented Napeñas from informing right away the AFP of the mission? Was he driven by greed? The fact that he coordinated only with the AFP at around 5:30 a.m. or an hour after killing Marwan showed that desperation to extract his men being assaulted brought him back to his senses,” Sarmiento said.

He also opted to report the progress of his operation to then suspended PNP chief Alan Purisima despite the absence of a formal directive from Aquino.

Sarmiento said Napeñas assumed it was okay for him to get his orders from Purisima for the simple reason that he was Aquino’s friend, which already showed his lack of prudence in dealing with operations as sensitive as Oplan Exodus.

He said being the chief of the PNP’s most elite unit, Napeñas was expected to be the expert in the tactical aspects of the operation and Aquino counted on him to do everything necessary to ensure the success of their operation and protect the lives of his men.

“Similar to a doctor, it was Napeñas who convinced the relatives of a patient to conduct a surgery. When the surgery fails, the doctor cannot blame the relative or the patient for relying on his expertise in good faith. Following this analogy, President Aquino is just a relative who just wanted the surgery to take place,” he said.