When a former high school classmate offered Leopoldo “Tata” Tan a tempting and rewarding job, he did not hesitate.
In exchange for 3 million pesos and a chance to be released from a penal farm, Tan agreed to kill in gangland-style three Chinese drug lords who were transferred from the National Bilibid Prisons (NBP) to the Davao Penal Colony in July 2016.
He had nothing to lose. He had everything to gain.
He recruited another person deprived of liberty (PDL) in the penal farm, Fernando “Andy” Magdadaro, to carry out the order from SPO4 Arthur Narsolis, who promised “isang manok kada ulo,” meaning 1 million pesos for each head of the drug lords — Chu Kin Tung, alias Tony Lim; Li Lan Yan, alias Jackson Li; and Wong Meng Pin, alias Wang Ming Ping.
At 8 p.m. on Aug. 13, 2016, Tan and Magdadaro repeatedly stabbed the three inside Cell No. 6 of the penal colony’s solitary confinement cell (bartolina).
But Narsolis could have made his promise better. Only 2 million pesos was given, and the PDLs remained inside the penal colony eight years after the job.
Narsolis, now retired, used to work closely with the then Davao City Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) head, Edilberto Leonardo, a member of the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA) class of 1998. He was originally a member of class 1996 but was delayed due to a murder case.
Leonardo was widely known in the police organization as close to former president Rodrigo Duterte.
Leonardo has retired from the police service and was appointed in 2022 to a six-year term as commissioner of the National Police Commission.
He was included as a suspect in the drug war case before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Narsolis was also close to Royina Garma, who used to be assigned at Davao City CIDG. Garma and Narsolis also used to have an illicit relationship.
In 2016, Garma was on police schooling and had no official designation in Davao City.
But she was in Davao City in late June 2016 and organized a meeting with her classmates, PNPA 1997.
In July, she and two other classmates paid a visit to the Davao Penal Colony, where another classmate, Jimmy Fortaleza, was serving time.
That was when she started asking about the three Chinese drug lords. Before she left, she exchanged phone numbers with Fortaleza.
Later, she made three calls to Fortaleza, one time asking him to pass the phone to the penal colony’s warden, Gerry Padilla.
She said the police would have an operation there and he should not interfere, warning him that his family would be in danger if he did not cooperate.
She met Padilla at the office of Leonardo to discuss the operation to kill the three Chinese drug lords.
On Aug. 11, Garma called up Fortaleza, informing him they already had people inside the penal colony who would carry out the killing.
Nonie Forro, the penal colony’s third in command, facilitated Tan and Magdadaro’s transfer to a cell with the three Chinese drug lords on Aug. 13.
Before they were brought together, Forro conducted “galugad” operations where illegal items were found separately in the cells of the local and foreign PDLs.
After the three were killed, Padilla said in his sworn statement, President Duterte called to congratulate him.
The killing of the three Chinese drug lords inside a penal colony was part of Duterte’s brutal and bloody war on drugs.
According to a former PNP spokesman, Bernard Banac, more than 29,000 people were killed in the drug war, although the police acknowledged only 7,200 deaths in legitimate police operations, all in supposed self-defense.
Leonardo’s classmate, Marvin Marcos, was linked to the killing of Albuera, Leyte mayor Rolando Espinosa inside the Baybay jail in November 2016.
Garma’s classmate, Lito Patay, was believed responsible for more than 100 deaths in 2016 in Quezon City’s Police Station 6.
A third classmate, Gerard Bantag, was appointed to the Bureau of Corrections in September 2019, to allegedly get rid of drug lords at the National Bilibid Prisons.
Espinosa, Reynaldo Paronijog, and other drug personalities belonged to the NBP drug cartel led by a Chinese national.
A congressional inquiry into the illegal drug trade and extra-judicial killings (EJK) has exposed that the murder of three Chinese drug lords in the Davao Penal Colony was part of Duterte’s real drug war.
A congressional inquiry found that the drug war was not meant to eliminate the drug menace because illegal drug substances continued to flood the country.
It was intended to eliminate a rival drug cartel. Some police officers played along with Duterte to enforce an iron-handed drug campaign.
MANUEL “MANNY” P. MOGATO is Editor-at-Large and opinion writer, writing under the column “In the Trenches.” As Reuters Manila correspondent, he and two other colleagues won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2018 for their coverage of the Duterte administration’s war on drugs.
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