Bato denies attending 2016 meeting prior to Chinese inmates kill order

Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa on Sunday refuted the claim that he attended a supposed courtesy call of police officers on former President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016, ahead of the killing of three Chinese drug convicts in August the same year.

The senator was reacting to the allegation of Abang Lingkod Rep. Joseph Stephen “Caraps” Paduano, the chair of the House Committee on Public Accounts—a panel part of the QuadCom that is jointly investigating deaths being linked to the Duterte administration's war on drugs.

“It is very clear from the recorded video of that hearing that Cong. Paduano is very excited and very insistent of my alleged presence in that courtesy call despite repeated denials from all the resource persons. Again, I vehemently deny that I was a party to that courtesy call or meeting,” Dela Rosa said in a statement.

“The effort to wholesale former president Duterte, Sen. Bong Go and myself in one single stroke is very evident in his line of questioning,” he added.

GMA News Online reached out to Paduano regarding the matter and will update this story once he responds.

In August this year, two persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) identified as Fernando Magdadaro and Leopoldo Tan Jr. said they killed three Chinese individuals convicted of drug charges on orders from Duterte.

The PDLs said that when they were still detained in the Davao Prison and Penal Farm in 2016, police officials told them to kill three Chinese drug convicts who were also detained in the same prison, in exchange for P1 million and their freedom.

They said they killed all three Chinese prisoners by stabbing them simultaneously on the night of August 13, 2016.

On Friday, the QuadCom cited National Police Commission (Napolcom) Commissioner Edilberto Leonardo in contempt and ordered him detained for allegedly lying when he denied that a meeting took place ahead of the killings.

The meeting supposedly took place at the Davao City Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) office and attended by then-Davao Prison and Penal Farm chief Gerardo Padilla and retired police colonel Royina Garma.

Padilla earlier confirmed that Duterte had called him up to congratulate him for the killing of the three Chinese drug convicts.

Meanwhile, Garma denied threatening a fellow police officer to get out of the way of the kill order.

Dela Rosa earlier alleged that some House members are conspiring to implicate him and Duterte in the extrajudicial killings currently under international scrutiny.

He also said that the ongoing House probe on the war on drugs was a “fishing expedition” meant to crush Duterte allies ahead of the 2025 and 2028 elections. —RF, GMA Integrated News