Murder Garma wrote

How much is a life worth? In the case of Wesley Barayuga, a retired police officer and Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) board secretary who was gunned down in broad daylight in 2020, the price was P300,000.

Testifying in the House quad committee’s probe into the Duterte drug war killings and the criminal activities of the Philippine offshore gaming operators, Lt. Col. Santie Mendoza of the Philippine National Police Drug Enforcement Group tagged former PCSO general manager Royina Garma and Edilberto Leonardo, an incumbent National Police Commissioner, as masterminds in Barayuga’s killing four years ago.

The testimony painted a disturbing picture of Garma, a retired police officer known to be close to former president Rodrigo Duterte, as the murderous mind behind a string of killings in the previous administration as well as corruption when she headed the PCSO.

Mendoza testified that between October 2019 and July 2020, Leonardo, then chief of the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Davao, contacted him to do a “special operation” to kill Barayuga, supposedly a “high-value” drug target in the Duterte drug war.

PCSO service vehicle

Mendoza said he felt pressured to follow since Leonardo told him the order came directly from Garma, and that he knew Garma and Leonardo had the backing of Duterte. Mendoza said he enlisted the help of a Nelson Mariano, one of his former informants, who found a hitman to carry out the killing.

Leonardo told him that Garma even assigned a PCSO service vehicle to Barayuga, ostensibly for his daily use since he used to commute to work, but it was really meant to track his movements. On July 30, 2020, Mendoza said Leonardo called him to say that Barayuga was in the PCSO office in Mandaluyong and that they could take him out when he left the building. He said Leonardo gave him a photo of Barayuga that Garma allegedly provided.

Mendoza said he passed all these information to Mariano, and shortly at past 3 p.m. that day, Barayuga was gunned down by a motorcycle-riding hitman. Leonardo handed him P300,000 allegedly from Garma, with P200,000 given to the hitman and the rest shared by Mendoza and Mariano.

Barayuga’s classmates from the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1983, which included National Security Adviser Eduardo Año, took exception to the allegations that the PCSO board member was involved in drugs, and offered a P1-million reward for information on his killing that remains unsolved.

‘Very dangerous’

Surigao del Sur Rep. Johnny Pimentel said they had information that before he was killed, Barayuga was set to testify about corruption in the small-town lottery operations being investigated by the National Bureau of Investigation, which was the reason why Garma wanted him dead.

Before the same committee, former Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña said Garma was named among “suspected protectors” of an illegal numbers game in a report by Manuel Fraginal Sr., chief of PCSO interbranch security monitoring. Because of this, Osmeña said he opposed Garma’s transfer to Cebu City as police chief and gave the report to Duterte, who referred it to his then special assistant and now Sen. Bong Go but nothing happened.

Osmeña said of Garma: “She is vicious; don’t let [her] tears fool you. She’s dangerous, believe me. Very dangerous.”

After Garma filed for early retirement from the PNP, she was appointed to the PCSO post by Duterte in 2019, when the agency reportedly lost P80 billion in revenue. Aside from hiring several family members in the PCSO, Garma allegedly funneled P2 million to a party list she had set up while her ex-husband, a police attaché in the United States, reportedly got P50 million from the agency.

Murderous regime

Garma and Leonardo were also implicated in the killing of three Chinese inmates at the Davao penal farm in 2016. Confessed hit man Arturo Lascañas also named them as key figures in the Davao Death Squad in his affidavit submitted to the International Criminal Court investigating the Duterte drug war killings.

Such grave allegations against Garma and Leonardo must now be subjected to proper investigation and prosecution to determine their culpability for the senseless killings that were normalized under the Duterte drug war.

PNP chief Gen. Rommel Francisco Marbil made the right call when he ordered the reopening of the Barayuga case in light of Mendoza’s revelations. “No one is above the law, and we will seek justice for retired Gen. Wesley Barayuga and his family with the full resources of the PNP,” Marbil said.

The Department of Justice must likewise pave the way for the prosecution of the guilty parties and the protection of witnesses to ensure that all the exposés coming out of the House hearings won’t be for naught.

With their notoriety mirroring that of their erstwhile powerful patron, Garma, Leonardo, and their ilk must be held to account before the courts for their horrific crimes so that the countless victims of a murderous regime will finally be given justice.