Tolentino seeks Senate probe on Bilibid 'mass grave'

Senator Francis Tolentino is seeking an investigation into the use of New Bilibid Prison’s (NBP) septic tank as a mass grave.

Tolentino filed Senate Resolution 709 urging the Senate committee on justice and human rights to investigate the remains found in a septic tank at the Bureau of Corrections which “compromise the safety and security” of the persons deprived of liberty as well as the BuCor personnel.

The probe is also intended to “shed light on how these things happened within the BuCor without the people manning the same knowing anything about it.”

Apart from the discovery of body parts inside the NBP’s septic tank, Tolentino mentioned in his resolution the shooting and stabbing incidents last July 26 inside the national penitentiary.

“One wonders how these contrabands, i.e. guns, ice picks and other weapons, which caused death and injury to people were in the possession of these PDLs and found their way inside the BuCor despite the protocols being observed therein by BuCor personnel and why the bodies of several dead PDLs were found inside the septic tank without these BuCor personnel knowing about it until recently,” Tolentino wrote in his resolution.

Last week, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said a decapitated body was found inside a septic tank at the NBP after a PDL went missing as early as July 15.

Remulla earlier said that there could be at least three mass graves inside the maximum security compound of the NBP. 

BuCor director-general Gregorio Catapang Jr. previously said that they will coordinate with forensic experts from the University of the Philippines  in the excavation of the second septic tank at the NBP.

Catapang on Thursday they are still unaware of the whereabouts inmate Michael Cataroja and are unsure if he is still alive or dead already.

“Ang status po niya (Cataroja) ay missing. Hangga’t di natin nabubuksan ang lahat ng septic tank at nagagalugad ang buong NBP, our declaration is he is missing,” Catapang told lawmakers, during the House public order and safety committee probe on the case of Cataroja.

[His status is missing. Until we open all the septic tanks at looked around the NBP, our declaration is he is missing.]

Meanwhile, BuCor Deputy Director Angelina Bautista said that Cataroja has a long history of hiding, and that the items found in the septic tank were a piece of underwear and a bone.

“We had a K9 dog who sniffed his clothes in Dorm 5 where he (Cataroja) lives, and the dog followed the smell in the septic tank where there (was) a brief and a bone,” Bautista said.

Bautista then said that the bone found in the septic tank is still being examined by the National Bureau of Investigation’s Forensic Unit. —VAL, GMA Integrated News