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.
Showing posts with label Father Fausto"Pops"Tentorio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Father Fausto"Pops"Tentorio. Show all posts
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Political Developments for the First Quarter of 2012, Part I: Arrest in Father Fausto "Pops" Tentorio's Murder, Kind of...Part 1
As far as the Philippines go, the life of a foreigner holds considerably more cachet than that of any Filipino. In fact, one foreigner's death is significantly more news worthy than a score of Filipino deaths. One might consider that the October 17th, 2011 killing of Father Fausto "Pops" Tentorio makes for an excellent case in point.
As I noted in a Fourth Quarter of 2011 entry, Father Pops was a Roman Catholic priest of the PIME, or Pontificium Institutum Missionum Exterarum Order. PIME priests traditionally missionise in distant and forlorn corners of the world. In Southeast Asia, "distant" and "forlorn" can be rather neatly summed up with just one word, "Mindanao." So it was that Father Pops, a native of Italy, came to find himself living in the municipality of Arakan, in North Cotabato Province. Ministering to Lumad (Hilltribesmen), he often found himself thick in the middle of the NPA Insurgency. Although it will naturally seem counter-intuitive to a great many people, the Philippine Church is more often than not squarely rooted on the Left of the political spectrum. With PIME's fondness for Liberation Theology it is really a no brainer.
Indeed, of three PIME priests murdered on Mindanao, two were killed for their support of the Maoist NPA. In the nearby municipality of Tulunan, Father Tullio Favali, another PIME priest from Italy, was shot to death on April 11th, 1985 in what is probably the nation's most famous murder. A CHDF (Civilian Home Defense Force) unit led by Norberto Manero Jr. had been paid by the municipal government of Tulunan to wrest control of outlying villages from the NPA by any means necessary. Chief among their targets was another PIME priest, Father Peter Geremiah, a man still spending his days working the Lumad in that general area.
When Geremiah did not materialise they focused their wrath on Father Favali. Although it was an extremely violent death by any measure, the circumastances have become mythologised, so warped with macabre fantasy that today, the media continues retelling the tale without an iota of fact checking. Why, everyone knows that the subhuman killer, Norberto Manero Jr., ate Father Favali's brains as a jeepney full of passengers rolled slowly through the intersection in stunned silence...except...that never took place. What certainly happened was that the young Italian priest lost his life in a brutal, extant counterinsurgency campaign. Like Father Pops, Father Favalli's death reverberated not only throughout the Philippines, but throughout the world.
Both slain priests were lionised as martyrs, not only by the Pope, but by secular pundits as well.Their deaths are still discussed by disparate segments of society. It isnt difficult at all to find recognition of either man, or of their personal missions in life. But what of Father Jesus Reynaldo "Rey" Roda? Father Rey, a Roman Catholic priest of the OMI (Oblates of Mary the Immaculate), brutally murdered on Tawi Tawi by Abu Sayyaf in 2008, received a couple of lines in most Philippine news outlet releases, and as for the Pope, Father Rey merely warranted two short paragraphs from a Papal Secretary, Cardinal Tercisio Bertune. Forget about foreign media outlets...Of course, it is narutal that Westerners will care more about events involving other Westerners, just as Manila-based newspapers report in DWI (drunk driving) arrests involving overseas Filipinos in another hemisphere. The curious aspect though, is that Filipinos (usually) could not care less about the brutal bludgeoning and then point blank shooting of a young Filipino priest on a Church altar, a man who disdained all secular politics and did not try to save non-Catholic souls, but will spend countless time and energy over a foreigner who blatantly supported the Maoist Insurgency...and thereby stood neck deep in innocent blood.
To recall, on October 17th, 2011, Father Pops, had walked out of his rectory in Arakan's Our Lady of Perpetual Help, andbwas just getting himself fastened into his Suzuki SUV when a blue Honda Wave motorcycle stopped at the end of the rectory's dirt driveway. A man got off the back of the motorcycle, without removing his helmet, and quickly walked 50 meters down the driveway to the rectory carport. Once he was two meters away from Father Tentorio, now sitting in his SUV, the man removed his helmet, placed it in his left hand, took a 9MM pistole from his waistband and raising his arm, shot the priest once in the abdomen with a standard ballpeen round. Quickly firing six more ballpeen rounds in quick succession, all between the waist and collar bone, he then slowly fired two hollow point rounds into the priest's chest from right next to the body, finally training his pistol on the now dead priest's mouth where he fired a coup de grace with a hollow point.
Placing his helmet back on his head, the gunman then ran back up the driveway to the still idling motorcycle, whose dtiver had been nervously scanning the area from behind his shaded helmet visor. The motorcycle quickly took off as soon as the gunman jumped back aboard.
As I have covered the aftermath of Father Tentorio's killing in that aforementioned Fourth Quarter of 2011 entry, I will simply move along to the meat and potatoes of THIS post, the naming of six suspects and the arrest of one of those men; Without a clue as to who might have committed the killing, but with everybody pointing fingers at each other, the Department of Justice, or DOJ, leaned on the Philippines' top law enforcement body, the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation), to find the killers (as it always has been assumed that there was a cabal behind the murder).
Within days, NBI-12 (NBI Region 12) decided on its "master plan." Deploying undercover agents as street vendors and mining middlemen, ore handlers, they flooded the municipality of Arakan in hopes of gleaning shreds of intelligence. It was a pair of undercover agents posing as ore handlers seeking a possible mining investment in Barangay Kulaman Valley that led to "paydirt," at least in the NBI's version of events. As in any Lumad community, nothing worth happening takes place without the express approval of tribal chiefs, and moreover, tribal elders. In Kuluman Valley, tge dominant tribe is the Teduray, and so the two NBI agents cum mining investors presented themselves to Teduray tribal elders.
Like any good conmen, the "mining investors" dangled promises of riches, infrastructure, and jobs in front of the Yeduray elders and soon found themselves the esteemed guests of the Ato Clan. Shuffled from house to house, the two NBI agents familiarised themselves with the Teduray Community in Kulaman. On December 27th, 2011, the two agents began staying in the household of Jimmy Ato, 31, his 20 year old wife Ritchie, and their pair of toddlers in that barangay's Sitio Ikaw Ikaw. What happened next is highly debatable depending upon who offers up the narrative.
According to the NBI, as the agents settled into the home of Jimmy Ato, another undercover agent, who had been posing as a vendor of Balut (the quinessential Philippine street food, fertilised duck eggs), communicated to the "mining iinvestors" that Jimmy Ato had been running his mouth about having killed Father Tentorio. According to this intelligence, Ato had even remarked that he had found himself so suprised to discover how easy it was to kill a priest. Curiously, this "factoid" did not serve as the basis of an actual criminal investigation. Logically, it would have beena simple endeavour to gain a witness statement (affadavit) and use it as the raison d'etre in an arrest watrant for the ptiest's murder. Instead, before daybreak, on December 29th, both undercover agents pulled 45 caliber pistols on Jimmy Ato as the hapless men slept on the floor beside his young wife and children, having given the best acvomidations in the home to the two "guests," as he had been directed to by duped tribal elders.
As Ritchie and two toddlers watched in horror, the two guests frog matched Jimmy out the front door and began the slow descent to the barangay's only road. Alerted by Ritchie's desperate pleas neighbours rushed to the downslope,trail to try and plead with the two armed men. Identifying themselves as NBI agebts the two men warned onlookers not to intervene lest they too end up marching down the mountainside. Among the fearful onlookers were Ato Clansmen whobrushed to inform Jimmy's brother, Roberto Ato.
Just as the two NBI agents forced Jimmy Ato onto the roadway for the long march into the barangay propet, and their pre-arranged transportation, sniper fire forced the agents, and their prisoner, to take cover behind some roadside boulders. Roberto Ato led several clansmen in an attempt to save Jimmy Ato from what to those present, was still an unknown fate. Often times attackers on Mindabao present themselves as PNP (Philippine National Police), AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines), and yes, NBI agents. Without identification, paperwork, or corroborative evide.ce, the two men escorting Jimmy Ato could be anybody...anybody with semi-automatic pistols trained on their loved one.
After nearly two hours of sporadic exchanges of gunfire, the two NBI agents and their prisoner Jimmy Ato were extricated safely by an NBI convoy that had been alerted by cellphone by one of the beleagured arresting agents. Owing to the sensitive nature of the crime, protocol was bypassed and Ato was driven not to NBI-12 Headquarters, but instead was directly taken to NBI-10 Headquarters, in Cagayan del Oro City. Processed, he was denied proper counsel as qell ad a chance to contact anybody, and was quickly bundled aboard an AFP AC130 transport on a direct flight to Manila. It was at NBI National Headquarters that Jimmy Ato first learned exactly what he faced.
To be continued in "Part 2"
As I noted in a Fourth Quarter of 2011 entry, Father Pops was a Roman Catholic priest of the PIME, or Pontificium Institutum Missionum Exterarum Order. PIME priests traditionally missionise in distant and forlorn corners of the world. In Southeast Asia, "distant" and "forlorn" can be rather neatly summed up with just one word, "Mindanao." So it was that Father Pops, a native of Italy, came to find himself living in the municipality of Arakan, in North Cotabato Province. Ministering to Lumad (Hilltribesmen), he often found himself thick in the middle of the NPA Insurgency. Although it will naturally seem counter-intuitive to a great many people, the Philippine Church is more often than not squarely rooted on the Left of the political spectrum. With PIME's fondness for Liberation Theology it is really a no brainer.
Indeed, of three PIME priests murdered on Mindanao, two were killed for their support of the Maoist NPA. In the nearby municipality of Tulunan, Father Tullio Favali, another PIME priest from Italy, was shot to death on April 11th, 1985 in what is probably the nation's most famous murder. A CHDF (Civilian Home Defense Force) unit led by Norberto Manero Jr. had been paid by the municipal government of Tulunan to wrest control of outlying villages from the NPA by any means necessary. Chief among their targets was another PIME priest, Father Peter Geremiah, a man still spending his days working the Lumad in that general area.
When Geremiah did not materialise they focused their wrath on Father Favali. Although it was an extremely violent death by any measure, the circumastances have become mythologised, so warped with macabre fantasy that today, the media continues retelling the tale without an iota of fact checking. Why, everyone knows that the subhuman killer, Norberto Manero Jr., ate Father Favali's brains as a jeepney full of passengers rolled slowly through the intersection in stunned silence...except...that never took place. What certainly happened was that the young Italian priest lost his life in a brutal, extant counterinsurgency campaign. Like Father Pops, Father Favalli's death reverberated not only throughout the Philippines, but throughout the world.
Both slain priests were lionised as martyrs, not only by the Pope, but by secular pundits as well.Their deaths are still discussed by disparate segments of society. It isnt difficult at all to find recognition of either man, or of their personal missions in life. But what of Father Jesus Reynaldo "Rey" Roda? Father Rey, a Roman Catholic priest of the OMI (Oblates of Mary the Immaculate), brutally murdered on Tawi Tawi by Abu Sayyaf in 2008, received a couple of lines in most Philippine news outlet releases, and as for the Pope, Father Rey merely warranted two short paragraphs from a Papal Secretary, Cardinal Tercisio Bertune. Forget about foreign media outlets...Of course, it is narutal that Westerners will care more about events involving other Westerners, just as Manila-based newspapers report in DWI (drunk driving) arrests involving overseas Filipinos in another hemisphere. The curious aspect though, is that Filipinos (usually) could not care less about the brutal bludgeoning and then point blank shooting of a young Filipino priest on a Church altar, a man who disdained all secular politics and did not try to save non-Catholic souls, but will spend countless time and energy over a foreigner who blatantly supported the Maoist Insurgency...and thereby stood neck deep in innocent blood.
To recall, on October 17th, 2011, Father Pops, had walked out of his rectory in Arakan's Our Lady of Perpetual Help, andbwas just getting himself fastened into his Suzuki SUV when a blue Honda Wave motorcycle stopped at the end of the rectory's dirt driveway. A man got off the back of the motorcycle, without removing his helmet, and quickly walked 50 meters down the driveway to the rectory carport. Once he was two meters away from Father Tentorio, now sitting in his SUV, the man removed his helmet, placed it in his left hand, took a 9MM pistole from his waistband and raising his arm, shot the priest once in the abdomen with a standard ballpeen round. Quickly firing six more ballpeen rounds in quick succession, all between the waist and collar bone, he then slowly fired two hollow point rounds into the priest's chest from right next to the body, finally training his pistol on the now dead priest's mouth where he fired a coup de grace with a hollow point.
Placing his helmet back on his head, the gunman then ran back up the driveway to the still idling motorcycle, whose dtiver had been nervously scanning the area from behind his shaded helmet visor. The motorcycle quickly took off as soon as the gunman jumped back aboard.
As I have covered the aftermath of Father Tentorio's killing in that aforementioned Fourth Quarter of 2011 entry, I will simply move along to the meat and potatoes of THIS post, the naming of six suspects and the arrest of one of those men; Without a clue as to who might have committed the killing, but with everybody pointing fingers at each other, the Department of Justice, or DOJ, leaned on the Philippines' top law enforcement body, the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation), to find the killers (as it always has been assumed that there was a cabal behind the murder).
Within days, NBI-12 (NBI Region 12) decided on its "master plan." Deploying undercover agents as street vendors and mining middlemen, ore handlers, they flooded the municipality of Arakan in hopes of gleaning shreds of intelligence. It was a pair of undercover agents posing as ore handlers seeking a possible mining investment in Barangay Kulaman Valley that led to "paydirt," at least in the NBI's version of events. As in any Lumad community, nothing worth happening takes place without the express approval of tribal chiefs, and moreover, tribal elders. In Kuluman Valley, tge dominant tribe is the Teduray, and so the two NBI agents cum mining investors presented themselves to Teduray tribal elders.
Like any good conmen, the "mining investors" dangled promises of riches, infrastructure, and jobs in front of the Yeduray elders and soon found themselves the esteemed guests of the Ato Clan. Shuffled from house to house, the two NBI agents familiarised themselves with the Teduray Community in Kulaman. On December 27th, 2011, the two agents began staying in the household of Jimmy Ato, 31, his 20 year old wife Ritchie, and their pair of toddlers in that barangay's Sitio Ikaw Ikaw. What happened next is highly debatable depending upon who offers up the narrative.
According to the NBI, as the agents settled into the home of Jimmy Ato, another undercover agent, who had been posing as a vendor of Balut (the quinessential Philippine street food, fertilised duck eggs), communicated to the "mining iinvestors" that Jimmy Ato had been running his mouth about having killed Father Tentorio. According to this intelligence, Ato had even remarked that he had found himself so suprised to discover how easy it was to kill a priest. Curiously, this "factoid" did not serve as the basis of an actual criminal investigation. Logically, it would have beena simple endeavour to gain a witness statement (affadavit) and use it as the raison d'etre in an arrest watrant for the ptiest's murder. Instead, before daybreak, on December 29th, both undercover agents pulled 45 caliber pistols on Jimmy Ato as the hapless men slept on the floor beside his young wife and children, having given the best acvomidations in the home to the two "guests," as he had been directed to by duped tribal elders.
As Ritchie and two toddlers watched in horror, the two guests frog matched Jimmy out the front door and began the slow descent to the barangay's only road. Alerted by Ritchie's desperate pleas neighbours rushed to the downslope,trail to try and plead with the two armed men. Identifying themselves as NBI agebts the two men warned onlookers not to intervene lest they too end up marching down the mountainside. Among the fearful onlookers were Ato Clansmen whobrushed to inform Jimmy's brother, Roberto Ato.
Just as the two NBI agents forced Jimmy Ato onto the roadway for the long march into the barangay propet, and their pre-arranged transportation, sniper fire forced the agents, and their prisoner, to take cover behind some roadside boulders. Roberto Ato led several clansmen in an attempt to save Jimmy Ato from what to those present, was still an unknown fate. Often times attackers on Mindabao present themselves as PNP (Philippine National Police), AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines), and yes, NBI agents. Without identification, paperwork, or corroborative evide.ce, the two men escorting Jimmy Ato could be anybody...anybody with semi-automatic pistols trained on their loved one.
After nearly two hours of sporadic exchanges of gunfire, the two NBI agents and their prisoner Jimmy Ato were extricated safely by an NBI convoy that had been alerted by cellphone by one of the beleagured arresting agents. Owing to the sensitive nature of the crime, protocol was bypassed and Ato was driven not to NBI-12 Headquarters, but instead was directly taken to NBI-10 Headquarters, in Cagayan del Oro City. Processed, he was denied proper counsel as qell ad a chance to contact anybody, and was quickly bundled aboard an AFP AC130 transport on a direct flight to Manila. It was at NBI National Headquarters that Jimmy Ato first learned exactly what he faced.
To be continued in "Part 2"
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