A continuation...
The beleagured Secretary of the Department of Justice, or DOJ, Leila de Lima glibly announced that one of Father Fausto."Pops" Tentorio's killers was now in NBI custody in Manila. The Philippines being what it is, the word "susoect" iscrarely, if ever, bandied about. Not only had there been an "arrest," but the man in custody, Jimmy Ato, was mnone other than the actual shooter himself.
In reality however, things were a great deal different. Contrary to Secretary de Lima's exacting claims, noone had been arrested in the killing, let alone Jimny Ato. Ato was in custody of course, but he had been taken on a 1995 arrest warrant for Arson with Homicide for a crime allegedly committed in the municipality of North Upi, in Maguindabao Province, when Ato had been all of age 16. Having gotten its hands in censuses taken by the AFP, or the Armed Forces of the Philippines PDTs (Peace and Development Teams), the NBI had quickly run each resident of thevtargetted municipality, Arakan, the town in which the killing had taken place, NBI had discovered the aforementioned Arson warrant against Jimmy Ato lying dormant...voila, a fallguy.
Subjected to extreme interrogation techniques-a given in the Philippine scheme of things-Ato quickly played ball. While denying he was the gunman, Ato fingered four other people. In early October of 2011, he said, he had been at a local store when two brothers, casual acquaintances of his- Jose Sultan Sampulna and Dima Maligudans Sampulna- had offered the itinerant mining labourer a chance to earm some decent money for once. Curious, Ato was toldvto join the brothers at a meeting with a local businessman and would be politician, William Buenaflor.
Accompanying the Sampulna Brothers to the Buenaflor home, he was suprised to see that recently named MPO, or Municipal Police Office Director, Senior Inspector Benjamin Rioflorado, also in attendance. According to this initial affadavit by Jimmy Ato, it was the Sampulna Brothers on that Honda Wave motorcycle that ferried the actual killer. The motive behind the killing, according to this affadavit, was Father Tentorio's rabid opposition to a proposed hydroelectric favility on the Pulangui River (Rio Grande de Mindanao). Willian Buenaflor represented a handful of businessnen whob stood to make millions of Pesos each should the hydroelectric project ever reach fruition. Senior Unspector Riofkirado was the broker of the murder contract, fingering the Sampulna Brothers...who in turn recruited Jimmy Ato as a lookout.
Curiously as well, both the NBI and the DOJ began leaking information that Roberto Ato, Jimmy's brother, also played a role in tge murder scheme. In fact, in the narrative that holds Jimmy Ato to be the gunman, Roberto is fingered as the driver of that motorcycle. Alatmed at being supposedly implicated in the killing, Roberto Ato fled Kulaman Valleyband Arakam as a whole and made his way to Kidapawan City where he took refuge with Congresswoman Nancy Catamco (North Cotabato 2nd District). Both Jimmy and Roberto serve as Catamco's local political base. Catamco noted that Roberto had never neen charged but that erroneous allegations could ruin his life.
Just after New Year, 2012, NBI went to court in Cotabato City to press forward with the aforementioned Arson with Homicide warrant from 1995. The motion asked the court to mandate Jimmy Ato to remain within NBI custody until the bureau is ready to move forward in the Father Tentorio. On February 24th, 2012, the NBI did just that, in conjunction with a parallel investigatory agency, Task Force Fausto (led by PRO-12, aka Police Regional Office for Region 12) charging Jimmy Ato, his younger brother Roberto (who remains protected by Congresswoman Nancy Catamco, the Ato political patron), along with both Sampurna Brothers, who up until the present (June of 2012), remain the subject of a manhunt.
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