MANILA – A senior member of the Philippine Senate has been placed on the watchlist of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) in connection with the filing in the lower court of double murder charges against him, the BI head disclosed on Tuesday.
Immigration Commissioner Marcelino Libanan said he placed Senator Panfilo Lacson on the bureau’s watchlist on request of the Department of Justice.
Libanan, however, clarified that a watchlist is entirely different from a hold-departure order which prevents an individual from leaving the country to answer charges filed in court.
He explained that an inclusion in the BI watchlist does not stop an individual from leaving the country but it enables the BI to monitor the movements of such individual, like Lacson, while he is abroad.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile also confirmed on Tuesday that he signed a travel authority allowing Lacson to go abroad sometime in December.
Lacson has not returned since then and failed to report back to the Senate since Congress resumed sessions on January 18 after a month-long Christmas break, Enrile said.
As a result, the Senate chief said he ordered the Senate secretariat to mark him absent for his continued failure to attend the sessions.
Enrile also admitted he does not know the whereabouts of Lacson but Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Junior said he received reports that their missing colleague is now in Australia.
While his colleagues were making conjectures on his whereabouts, the staff of Lacson’s office issued a statement late Tuesday afternoon that the senator is abroad due to the filing of the murder charges against him.
The statement described the charges as part of the “harassment†and “persecution†being conducted by the Arroyo administration against Lacson for his exposes on the Senate floor regarding anomalies in government, including alleged massive and unabated corruption.
Meanwhile, Libanan cited immigration records which showed that Lacson departed from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport for Hong Kong on January 5, or two days before the justice department filed double murder charges against him
The charges which were filed before the Regional Trial Court of Manila, named Lacson as one of the principal accused in the murder of noted publicist Salvador “Bubby†Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito on November 24, 2000.
At that time, Lacson was acknowledged as one of the country’s most powerful officials because he headed the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (Paoctf) in a concurrent capacity as the director general of the Philippine National Police under then president Joseph Estrada.
Based on the testimonies of two former aides at the Paoctf, government lawyers filed the cases in court against Lacson who was named as the alleged mastermind in the murder of Dacer and his driver.
The aides gave sworn statements alleging that Lacson ordered the killing of Dacer to stop him from releasing to the public detailing scandals that could lead to the downfall of the Estrada administration.
The victims were aboard a van on their way to Dacer’s office at the Manila Hotel when they were abducted by armed men suspected to be members of the Paoctf shortly before noon on November 24, 2000.
The charred remains of Dacer and Corbito were found a few days later in a mountain town in Cavite province in Southern Luzon.
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