Garma, 4 others face arrest over ex-PCSO exec slay
A Mandaluyong court has ordered the arrest of former police Col. Royina Garma and retired police officer Edilberto Leonardo on nonbailable charges of murder and frustrated murder in connection with the 2020 killing of former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) board secretary Wesley Barayuga.
The warrant of arrest issued by the Mandaluyong City Regional Trial Court Branch 279 on Sept. 13 directed authorities to arrest Garma, Leonardo, as well as Jeremy Causapin, Santie Mendoza, and Nelson Mariano.
Barayuga, a former police brigadier general and a lawyer, was gunned down in broad daylight on July 30, 2020, by a motorcycle-riding gunman in Mandaluyong while on his way home. His driver survived the attack.
Alleged masterminds
Garma and Leonardo were tagged by Mendoza as the alleged masterminds behind the killing of Barayuga.
During House inquiries into extrajudicial killings and the bloody antinarcotics campaign of the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte, Mendoza, a member of the PNP Drug Enforcement Group, testified that between October 2019 and July 2020, Leonardo—then chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Davao—contacted him several times about a “special operation” targeting Barayuga, allegedly for his involvement in illegal drugs.
Mendoza said he understood “special operation” to mean an order to kill, and claimed Leonardo told him the directive came from Garma.
He added that he felt coerced into joining the plot because Garma and Leonardo had the strong backing of Duterte, and were his seniors at the Philippine National Police Academy.
Both Garma and Leonardo denied Mendoza’s allegations, insisting they had never met him prior to his testimony at the House hearing.
In October 2024, the National Bureau of Investigation ordered the revival of the cold case into Barayuga’s July 2020 ambush-slay.
Potential witness
Garma, who was appointed general manager of the PCSO by Duterte following her retirement from police service, had separately revealed in the House hearings that the Duterte administration implemented a “Davao template” reward system for police officers tasked to carry out killings in its signature “war on drugs.”
She was also implicated in the killing of three convicted Chinese drug lords at the Davao prison in 2016, when she was still in the police force.
She applied for asylum in the United States, but the application was denied and she was deported earlier this month from Los Angeles.
Shortly after her deportation, she traveled to Malaysia to meet with representatives of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a potential witness in the crimes against humanity case against Duterte.
NBI chief Jaime Santiago told the Inquirer on Monday that Garma was still in Malaysia.
Department of Justice spokesperson Jose Dominic Clavano IV said the government could now move to have her passport canceled, since “local processes have to take precedence.”
For his part, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said he believed the arrest warrant against Garma would not affect her possible testimony before the ICC. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
