House Quad Committee leaders yesterday admitted to holding a private meeting with Hector Grijaldo, a police colonel, but denied pressuring him to corroborate the supposed cash rewards given by then President Rodrigo Duterte to cops who killed drug suspects.
In a briefing on Tuesday, panel co-chairs Dan Fernandez and Bienvenido Abante Jr. confirmed that they had a closed-door meeting with Grijaldo prior to the Senate hearing on Monday, but “not on [their] own volition.”
Fernandez asserted that they only acted on retired police Colonel Royina Garma’s recommendation that they meet with Grijaldo, citing his supposed knowledge about the alleged cash reward scheme.
“It was Colonel Garma who asked [us] to talk to Colonel Grijaldo because, according to Colonel Garma, he was a friend of hers. Unfortunately, what he said about coercion and harassment never happened,” Fernandez told reporters in a mix of Filipino and English.
“If we had used force on him at the time, there was still a lot of time for him to react, but he did nothing,” Fernandez said.
At the Senate’s first hearing into Duterte’s controversial drug war on Monday, Grijaldo accused Fernandez and Abante of trying to coerce him into corroborating Garma’s affidavit that she submitted to the quad committee inquiry into the so-called incentives in the previous administration’s anti-drug operations.
Grijaldo claimed that Abante attempted to convince him to do their bidding by implying that he could get a promotion to police general.
The police officer said he felt “insulted” and “corrupted” by the conversation he had with the two lawmakers, but he refused to be influenced by them.
Fernandez explained that the meeting was merely part of the “vetting process” and said that they were accompanied by two lawyers of Garma to ensure a “spirit of transparency.”
The lawmaker, nonetheless, said they would not take Grijaldo’s allegation at the Senate sitting down, citing the gravity of his testimony against them that was made under oath.
“First and foremost, it was a demolition. Second, it’s an attack against me, and most likely they really wanted to discredit the whole of the Quad Committee, and it’s quite unfair,” Fernandez stressed. “And it is incumbent upon the leadership of the Quad Committee and the House as well to take action on this.”
Abante suspected that Grijaldo made the allegation in an attempt to wash his hands of the bloody drug war.
Grijaldo, a classmate and a “friend” of Garma, was the Mandaluyong police chief when Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office board secretary and retired police Brig. Gen. Wesley Barayuga was shot dead by a man on a motorcycle shortly after leaving the PCSO office in Mandaluyong in July 2020.
Garma and resigned National Police Commission chief Edilberto Leonardo were the alleged masterminds of the ambush.
“He (Grijaldo) was the chief of police in Mandaluyong [when] General Barayuga was killed. Where is the police report? Nothing. What does this mean? Colonel Garma said he knows a lot,” Abante pointed out.
Both Garma and Leonardo were reportedly closely associated with Duterte and were believed to be members of the Davao Death Squad.
During a recent hearing of the House Quad Committee, Leonardo confirmed under oath the existence of a cash reward system during the Duterte administration, which added weight to Garma’s and police Lt. Col. Jovie Espenido’s testimonies.
Leonardo was purportedly handpicked by Duterte to head the task force assigned to implement the nationwide killings, which were modeled after the “Davao template.”
The model was allegedly developed during Duterte’s tenure as Davao City mayor and rewarded cops with cash in exchange for killing drug suspects.
Garma disclosed that the monetary rewards ranged from P20,000 to P1 million, depending on the prominence of the target.
Duterte confirmed to the Senate probe that he had a death squad comprised of “gangsters” and not policemen.