Lawyer seeks sanctions vs exec who leaked Mancao's affidavit

CHICAGO – The lawyer of Cezar Mancao II has urged Philippine Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez to “punish the government official" who leaked the affidavit of his client to the media. What the goverment does to the government official who leaked the affidavit Mancao signed last Feb. 13 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, will be a test on how well the Department of Justice (DOJ) protects the evidence in its custody. That was the assessment lawyer Arnedo S. Valera told this reporter in a telephone call. He did not, however, confirm if the published leaked affidavit matched with the original. "If it turns out that the Justice Department mishandled the affidavit, how will you trust it in handling prospective witnesses like Mr. Mancao?" asked Valera, executive director of the Fairfax, Virginia-based Migrant Heritage Commission Inc. The commission is a nonprofit service-oriented tax-exempt organization addressing issues confronting Filipino migrants, including Filipino-Americans in the US, protecting cultural identity, rights, and as a resource centers of Filipinos. According to a source, there were two copies of affidavit sealed after Mancao signed it on Feb. 13 in Fort Lauderdale. One copy was sent to Secretary Gonzalez. The other copy was given to Mancao’s wife, Maricar. And the unsealed copy was kept by the one who administered the oath for his file. The oath administrator, who is a quasi-diplomat for the Philippines, did not even send a copy to the Philippine Embassy nor to the Department of Foreign Affairs, the source quoted the oath administrator as saying. The same source said the oath administrator suspected that it was possible that Mrs. Mancao might have leaked it to someone else. But Valera denied that Mancao had leaked her copy. Mrs. Mancao could not be reached for comment. Locked in bank vault Valera explained that it could not be Mrs. Mancao who leaked it because Secretary Gonzalez had already been quoted in newspaper reports as saying that a "government official was responsible for leaking it" to Philippine newspapers and media outlets. If this was the case, Valera asked, how come Secretary Gonzalez told the media that he had locked the affidavit in a bank vault? If an affidavit from a bank vault could be leaked, then there would be no safer place to keep such important document, Valera suggested. At the same time, Valera urged Secretary Gonzalez to find the killers of Philippine police Superintendent Teofilo Vina, Mancao’s co-accused in the double murder of publicist Salvador “Bubby" Dacer and Dacer’s driver, Emmanuel Corbito. He said it was important to find out if there were conspirators and collaborators in Vina’s murder. If the conspirators and collaborators turn out to have something to do with the Dacer-Corbito murders, then other witnesses in the Dacer-Corbito murders could be the next target. "I don’t want what happened to Mr. Vina happen to my client, Mr. Mancao," Valera fumed. Before he was killed, Vina was reported to have admitted heading the team that burned the bodies of Dacer and Corbito after the two had been strangled to death in Cavite province in the Philippines. A number of current government officials allegedly heard Vina’s confession at the Shangri-La Plaza Hotel, according to former police intelligence chief Reynaldo Berroya. When Vina was about to sign an affidavit, Berroya reportedly begged off, so then Philippine National Police Chief and now Sen. Panfilo Lacson would not get back at him. Vina was included in the criminal indictment but was gunned down in January 2003 at a party in his native Cavite before he could be placed in a witness stand. A suspect in Vina’s killing identified as Medar Cruz allegedly met with two people in the summer of 2001 in Virginia. A former policeman, Renato Arenas, who reportedly witnessed the killing of Vina, fled to the US after being charged with killing of someone else in Cavite. Valera said the extradition of Mancao should take place in two weeks. He is just hopeful Secretary Gonzalez will act favorably on Mancao’s request to have media presence during Mancao’s trip to the Philippines and to let Mancao wear a bullet-proof vest. Valera added that Mancao had also requested that he and Mancao’s wife, Maricar, be given complimentary round-trip tickets when they accompany Mancao in that trip to the Philippines. The budget for these tickets could be sourced from the government’s witness protection program. Valera clarified that the reason Mancao was wearing an orange prison uniform when he visited Mancao last March 17 at the Federal Detention Center in Miami, Florida, was that Mancao was a suspect not a convict and was not a US citizen. Mancao’s wife, Maricar, visited Mancao on March 16, Maricar’s birthday. - GMANews.TV