Agra open to probe on massacre witness bribe try

Former Justice secretary Alberto Agra on Sunday denied knowledge on the alleged attempt to bribe a witness who implicated a member of the powerful Ampatuan clan in the Maguindanao massacre case. Agra said he is open to any investigation on his possible culpability on the incident exposed last Wednesday by Ricardo Diaz of the National Bureau of Investigation counter-terrorism division. “I am open to any probe in order to shed more light on this deplorable incident," he said in a statement. Diaz filed his affidavit attesting that a certain Juanito Mariano offered P10 million to witness Kenny Dalandag in exchange for the recantation of his testimony pinning former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) governor Zaldy Ampatuan in the November 23 massacre that killed 57 people. The alleged bribery attempt happened on June 10 when Agra was still Justice secretary. Diaz added that he reported the incident to Agra, who supposedly said he needed to back his claim with evidence first. Agra earned controversy in April when he cleared Zaldy and another Ampatuan clan member, Akhmad, of murder charges in connection with the massacre. He reversed that decision a month later. Current Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said that if she were in Agra’s shoes, she would have immediately ordered an investigation on the supposed bribery attempt. She said the prosecutors investigating the supposed bribe try would determine whether Agra and former NBI director Nestor Mantaring should be held liable for the lapse in judgment. But in his statement, Agra said that had he known that Mariano approached Diaz to gain access to Dalandag, he would have acted also “as this act [bribe try] would have frustrated my commitment at that time to prosecute the case with earnestness and vigor." He added that it was only last Friday when he found out that there was an NBI report on the matter, although that information did not come from Diaz but from an NBI deputy director whom he did not identify. The former Justice chief said the NBI report was not submitted to his office but was forwarded instead to the department’s Witness Protection Security and Benefits Program (WPSBP). - KBK, GMANews.TV