Former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Workplace Common Supervisor Royina Garma —PHOTO BY NIÑO JESUS ORBETA
A former police official has dropped what could possibly be the largest bombshell within the ongoing Home quad committee hearings when she informed lawmakers on Friday that former President Rodrigo Duterte supplied money rewards for each drug suspect killed in his administration’s brutal struggle on medication.
In an emotional tell-all testimony on Friday night time, a tearful retired Police Col. Royina Garma mentioned it took her every week to “make reflections” that supposedly helped her notice that it was time for her to “converse the reality” in regards to the bloody antinarcotics marketing campaign of her former boss.
Garma, a graduate of the Philippine Nationwide Police Academy (PNPA) Class 1997, has been beforehand recognized as certainly one of Duterte’s trusted aides after serving as a police station commander in Davao Metropolis when he was nonetheless its mayor and later as Cebu Metropolis police chief.
Duterte appointed her as normal supervisor of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Workplace (PCSO) in 2019 after her early retirement from the police power.
“I’m afraid (for) my life and (for) the lives of my family members, my mates and classmates (within the PNPA),” Garma mentioned as she broke down in tears.
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Studying from a ready affidavit, she mentioned Duterte phoned her in Might 2016 and instructed her to search out him a PNP officer who would lead the federal government’s drug struggle just like the “Davao mannequin.”
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“This Davao mannequin referred to the system involving funds and rewards,” the previous PCSO chief mentioned.
Recruits from PNPA
“The Davao mannequin includes three ranges of funds or rewards. First is the reward if the suspect is killed. Second is the funding of deliberate operations, or Coplans (case operation plans). Third is the refund of operational bills,” she added.
In accordance with her, Duterte had particularly directed her to decide on a police officer who’s a member of the Iglesia ni Cristo sect, however didn’t clarify the necessity for such qualification.
She mentioned she ultimately really helpful Police Lt. Col. Edilberto Leonardo, an INC member who was then assigned with the PNP Felony Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG)
She mentioned in addition they recruited different PNPA graduates, significantly those that belonged to the members of Class 1996 and 1997.
After a couple of months, she mentioned Leonardo, who’s now one of many commissioners of the Nationwide Police Fee, began assembly with different cops in establishing a gaggle that might implement the drug struggle on a nationwide scale.
Garma mentioned Leonardo ready a proposal to create a job power, which he supposedly submitted to Duterte by then Particular Assistant to the President Christopher “Bong” Go, who’s now a reelectionist senator.
Duterte, she famous, needed the group to be patterned after the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Activity Pressure, now often known as the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Fee.
“He (Leonardo) conveyed that the duty power could be structured in another way and that he submitted a doc to Bong Go detailing the duty power’s operations, together with an outline of the present drug panorama within the Philippines,” Garma mentioned.
After the duty power turned “operational,” she mentioned that she discovered that each one funds, refunds for operation bills and rewards for brokers had been processed by the financial institution accounts of a sure Peter Parungo in Metrobank, BDO and PS Financial institution.
The “drug construction,” she mentioned, got here from the Bureau of Corrections “the place quite a few drug lords are incarcerated, and that it has three branches (Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao).”
‘Operatives’
It was Peter Lim, a businessman primarily based in Cebu Metropolis, who was behind the unlawful drug operations within the Visayas, she mentioned.
Garma mentioned the “rewards” had been solely given to the cops who killed drug suspects.
For individuals who had arrested drug personalities, she mentioned “solely the funding of the Coplan and a refund for the bills was given” to them.
Leonardo had informed her that he had recruited his “trusted personnel” to assist him perform the struggle on medication as “operatives.”
Amongst them had been Lester Berganio, Rommel Bactat, Rodel Cerbo, Michael Palma and Parungo.
Garma mentioned Bactat, Cerbo and Palma had been former cops who had been discharged from the service in 2015 for his or her participation in a police operation through which an individual was killed.
Berganio was a non-public citizen whereas Parungo was a rape suspect who was previously detained on the CIDG.
“Rommel Bactat, Rodel Cerbo, Michael Palma and Peter Parungo had been charged with the duty of amassing and verifying info offered by cops within the subject regarding arrests and/or deaths of people named within the checklist of drug personalities, and making a abstract report,” she mentioned.
“All of those reviews would then be encoded and compiled by Lester Berganio. The compilation is thereafter elevated to Leonardo who will determine what ‘stage’ the arrest and/or killing was and its corresponding reward,” she mentioned.
The Duterte administration has reported that greater than 6,000 folks had been killed within the drug struggle, however human rights teams mentioned that the variety of extrajudicial killings was nearer to 30,000 through the six-year marketing campaign.
Direct position
In a press release, the human rights group Karapatan mentioned Garma’s testimony “bolsters the observations” of family members of most of the drug struggle victims, native communities and rights teams that Duterte and the PNP had a direct position “within the mass homicide of 1000’s of their sham drug struggle.”
“Her account additionally affirms the assertion that the federal government incentivized the police to undertake and legitimize the state-sanctioned killings of the poor,” mentioned Karapatan Secretary Common Cristina Palabay.
“With this, alongside the robust arguments laid earlier than the Worldwide Felony Courtroom by the households of victims, we name on the Courtroom to situation a warrant of arrest in opposition to Duterte and all those that perpetrated the mass homicide of Filipinos by the struggle on medication marketing campaign,” she mentioned.
In a single current quad committee listening to, a police officer mentioned Garma was behind the homicide of PCSO board secretary Wesley Barayuga and Leonardo allegedly was tasked by Garma with searching for a hitman.
Each Garma and Leonardo denied his allegations.
Garma additionally was implicated within the deaths of three Chinese language drug lords who had been serving time on the Davao penal farm in 2016.
Former jail warden Col. Gerardo Padilla informed Home lawmakers that he was “subjected to intense stress” by Garma to go together with the homicide plot, and that Duterte personally referred to as him later to “congratulate” him after the three males had been killed by different inmates who stabbed them.