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BUBBY DACER
.... murder unsolved
after 8 years |
Former Police Senior Supt. Michael Ray Aquino, one of several police offi cers wanted for the murder of Bubby Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito, was recently sentenced to six years imprisonment in U.S. court not for murder but for an espionage case.
Aquino, 41, pleaded guilty in July 2006 for passing classified information to opposition politicians as part of a plot to oust President Arroyo. Had he not pleaded guilty he could have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Aquino obtained thedocuments from his co-accused Leandro Aragoncillo,
48, a Filipino FBI intelligence analyst who had worked as military aide to Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney. Aragoncillo had pleaded guilty to four charges including conspiracy to transmit national defense information and faces 15 to 20 years in prison.
Recipients of classified information from Aquino included President Joseph Estrada, Senator Panfilo Lacson and Camarines Sur Rep. Arnulfo Fuentebella according to court documents.
Meanwhile, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales said the justice department will now go after “several unindicted co-conspirators who have been very clearly named in the documents”.
Gonzales said that they were promised to be furnished with all the documents after the trial.
Aquino was a deputy director of the PNP and also a senior superintendent of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) which has now been disbanded. Aquino fled to the U.S. in July 2001 to escape arrest in connection with the murder of Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000. The victims were abducted on their way to Dacer’s Manila Hotel office.
Aquino studied nursing in New York and passed the board examination in 2004.
The liaison between Aragoncillo and Aquino was discovered when Aragoncillo tried to use his influence to intervene for Aquino when the latter was arrested for overstaying his visa.
In an interview with MONITOR in August last year then NBI Regional Director Ricardo Diaz who was among those tasked by the late NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco to handle the Dacer case with Samuel Ong as team leader said NBI witnesses pinpointed then Chief Supt Michael Rey Aquino, Chief Supt. Cesar Mancao, Supt. Glenn Dumlao and Supt. Teofilo Viña as masterminds.
Aquino and Mancao both fled to the US. Viña who allegedly headed the abductors was subsequently killed in an incident not related to the Dacer case.
Dumlao volunteered to act as slate witness but a Manila Regional Trial Court ruled that as one of the principal suspects he could not be state witness. After the court ruling Dumlao also went into hiding, Diaz said.
All PAOCTF men suspected to be involved in the Dacer case, mostly from the Visayas group of Supt. Viña are under detention in Philippine jail except the alleged masterminds according to Diaz.
