Philippine prosecutors will charge the country’s former prisons chief with murder, alleging he “masterminded” the killing of a prominent journalist in the capital Manila, the justice ministry said Tuesday.
Ex-prisons chief Gerald Bantag is accused of ordering the assassination of radio broadcaster Percival Mabasa, who was shot dead near his home last October after making comments online that appeared to link Bantag to corruption.
Officials have also accused Bantag of ordering the killing of Cristito Villamor Palana, a prison inmate who allegedly passed the kill order to the gunman who shot Mabasa.
“On the part of respondent Bantag, sufficient circumstantial evidence have been presented to establish that he masterminded the assassination” of Mabasa, a justice ministry statement said.
Bantag will also be charged for Palana’s murder, after the ex-prisons chief allegedly induced inmates to kill the prisoner, it added.
Lawyers for Bantag did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Bantag had previously denied any corruption or role in the killings.
President Ferdinand Marcos suspended Bantag as director-general of the Bureau of Corrections days after the inmate’s killing by suffocation.
Ten other suspects, including the former deputy corrections chief and the confessed gunman, will also be charged for the journalist’s murder, the justice ministry said.
In addition, the ex-deputy prisons chief and eight prisoners will be charged for the murder of Palana, the ministry added.
The killings have put alleged abuses in the country’s overcrowded prisons in the spotlight.
After his sacking, Bantag admitted that he ordered a huge pit dug beside his home inside a Manila prison complex, but denied it was an escape tunnel for inmates.
He said he wanted to create the “deepest swimming pool” in Manila, to use for scuba diving.
Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla had said that Bantag had told him he was searching for fabled treasure stolen from around Southeast Asia by Japanese forces in World War II and rumoured to be buried in the Philippines.
“That was supposed to be a treasure hunt… I told him to stop it,” Remulla said. — Agence France-Presse
