Hostage-taker not part of team that arrested Lim’s son — PDEA

Former Senior Inspector Rolando Mendoza, the hostage-taker in the August 23 hostage-taking incident in Manila, was not among the police operatives who arrested the son of Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim over drug-related charges in 2008. The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) made this clarification after Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, head of an inter-agency committee investigating the hostage incident, said she received “persistent information" that Mendoza was among those who arrested Manuel Lim two years ago. “There is persistent information about him (Mendoza) being the one responsible for the arrest of the son of the Mayor in his drug case," De Lima said during the fifth day of the Incident Investigation and Review Committee (IIRC) probe Wednesday. “We can't ignore those kinds of persistent information that somehow Mendoza had a hand in the arrest, whether he was the team leader of the arrest team or as member of the arrest team. We are still checking that," she added. But a report in GMA News “24 Oras" on Wednesday quoted PDEA chief Dionisio Santiago as saying that Mendoza was never a part of the agency, and that he did not know where De Lima got the information. Mendoza, dismissed from police service over a robbery-extortion case, killed eight hostages before he was shot dead in a police assault at the conclusion of the 11-hour hostage crisis. Lim was head of the local crisis management committee that handled the hostage situation.
Lim’s camp had also denied that Mendoza was involved in the arrest of Manuel Lim. Rafaelito Garayblas, the mayor’s close-in aide or secretary, said the arrest was conducted by PDEA agents and not by Manila Police District operatives. During the IIRC clarificatory hearing on Wednesday, De Lima asked for confirmation of the report from broadcast journalist Erwin Tulfo, who said he covered the Manila police beat from 1998 to 1999. He also spoke with Mendoza during the critical moments of the hostage crisis at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila. Tulfo said he heard about the Lim-Mendoza connection but said he “dismissed it as probably tsismis (rumors)." “When did you first hear about the information, whether it is rumor or not, that Mendoza was responsible for the arrest of the son of the mayor?" De Lima asked Tulfo. Tulfo replied, “One week after the arrest." According to De Lima, the panel has received text messages about Mendoza’s alleged involvement in the arrest of Lim’s son. She declined to identify the sources of the text messages, adding that the information is still being verified. However, she said that it is still premature to conclude that Lim’s demeanor in handling the hostage crisis had something to do with Mendoza’s supposed hand in the arrest of the his son. “But we need to know all of these because it just so happened that there was this hostage-taking. It can help us assess the actuations and instructions of the mayor as chair of the (local crisis management committee)," she added. - KBK, GMANews.TV