By Manny Mogato

(October 16, 2024) — At 3:05 a.m. on November 5, 2016, a team of police officers from the regional Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) stormed a detention cell at the Baybay Provincial Jail in Leyte, searching for illegal drugs and weapons.

Forty-four minutes later, Rolando Espinosa and Raul Yap were dead with gunshots in the head and body when the police, led by P/Maj. Leo Laraga, claimed they chose to shoot it out with the search team.

Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief and a senator, doubted the police narrative on the death of Espinosa, a first-term mayor of Albuera town in Leyte.

Espinosa and his son, Kerwin, were suspected to be the big-time drug lords in the Eastern Visayas region.

Kerwin was in Dubai when his father was killed.

Lacson said Espinosa’s killing could be well-planned and deliberate. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) investigation confirmed Lacson’s suspicions.

Espinosa and Yap, who shared his jail cell, were murdered in cold blood. They did not have guns, and they did not initiate a gunfight.

Almost five years after the killing, a Quezon City regional trial court acquitted all 19 police officers who were part of the search team, including Colonel Marvin Marcos, the regional chief of the CIDG at the time of the incident. Laraga was demoted to one rank lower.

Fast forward to October 2024, Espinosa’s son Kerwin was demanding justice for his father’s death.

An emotional Kerwin Espinosa told a joint congressional inquiry his father was killed on orders of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who launched a genocidal war on drugs when he was in power from 2016 to 2022.

Estimates of deaths in Duterte’s drug war vary from 12,000 to 30,000 people. However, the national police had admitted to killing more than 7,000 people in legitimate anti-illegal drugs operations, claiming self-defense.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague had initiated an investigation into crimes against humanity. Duterte, former national police chiefs Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and Oscar Albayalde, and three police officers were the main respondents in the ICC complaints.

Espinosa was one of several local officials killed in Duterte’s war on drugs, which many believed was a campaign to eliminate rivals in the drug trade business.

Most of the local officials and big-time drug lords killed in Duterte’s brutal and bloody war on drugs belonged to drug cartels associated with Chinese drug traders Peter Lim and Peter Co.

There were intelligence reports that linked Kerwin Espinosa to Jeffrey Diaz, alias “Jaguar,” who was the first drug lord to be killed 11 days before Duterte was sworn in as president.

Jaguar was formerly romantically linked to Kerwin’s wife, and all three met when Espinosa was detained in Cebu for drug charges.

Two months later, another drug lord linked to Jaguar, Melvin Odicta, and his wife Miriam were gunned down in a port in Aklan. Diaz and Odicta were believed to be the biggest drug lords in the Visayas, Cebu, and Iloilo, respectively. The Espinosas were believed to be the biggest illegal drug distributor in Leyte in the Eastern Visayas. All were killed in 2016, the first five months of Duterte’s war on drugs.

The following year, Reynaldo Parojinog of Ozamis City in Misamis Occidental was gunned down in another raid at his home.

Like the Espinosas, the Parojinogs were also linked to the drug cartel operating inside the National Bilibid Prisons (NBP).

Parojinog was not alone — a local official and two former mayors from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao — Samsudin Dimaukom of Saudi Ampatuan town, former Parang mayor Talib Abo and Montasser Sabal of Talitay town were also gunned down.

In July 2018, Tanuan, Batangas Mayor Antonio Halili was shot dead by a sniper during a flag ceremony. Halili was also suspected to be a drug lord.

In 2019, Duterte, in a public statement, said about
150 local officials had links to illegal drugs, primarily mayors and barangay leaders. But Espinosa’s murder was one for the books.

Laraga secured a search warrant from a local judge not in Leyte but in a neighboring island of Samar based on a piece of information from a former detainee who had no personal knowledge about what was going on inside the Baybay jail.

Based on court records, the informant told the judge he was inside the jail on October 28 when he saw Yap repacking drugs inside the cell beside Espinosa, who was holding a gun. Jail guards denied the informant’s statement. They said he was never inside the facility on the said day, October 28.

It appeared the police made up a story to get to Espinosa and kill him inside his jail cell.

On November 5, the raiding police team disarmed the jail guards on duty and made them face the wall, ripped off the CCTV, and went to Espinosa’s cell. Within minutes, several gunshots were heard. Some of the detainees in nearby cells listened to the mayor begging for his life and asking the police not to plant weapons inside his cell.

Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop, a former police general, said Espinosa was killed because he had no value alive.
There was a reward to be collected for his death. Duterte had more than 3,000 targets in the drug war, and each name in the list had a corresponding reward.

Colonel Edilberto Leonardo, the former CIDG regional commander in Davao and a classmate of Colonel Marcos at the PNPA, was running the drug war operations.

In 2019, he was moved to a civilian job as an undersecretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to be closer to Manila.

Before Duterte stepped down, he was rewarded with a position at the National Police Commission with a fixed term.

Leonardo was listed as a suspect in the ICC investigation.

Two witnesses — Colonel Jovie Espenido and former Colonel Royina Garma — had also told a joint congressional committee that up to one million pesos was offered as a reward for a drug lord who was killed.

Garma even told the congressional inquiry that the reward money was directly coming from Malacañang implicating Sen. Bong Go in the whole war on drugs operations.

As special assistant to the president from 2016 to 2019, Go was also in charge of the Presidential Management Staff.

A certain Iriwina Espino, also known as Muking, was sending money to three bank accounts owned by a civilian who was part of Leonardo’s secret group running the drug war operations.

From the start, in 2016, Duterte had allegedly carried out a campaign not to eliminate the illegal drug menace but to wipe out a rival drug cartel based on false information, fabricated evidence, and staged executions.

However, thousands of street-level peddlers, couriers, and users became collateral damage in the actual drug war.

Lawmakers have heard enough stories from witnesses in the congressional inquiry. It’s about time they turned over these testimonies to the law enforcement agencies and the justice department to prosecute those who were involved in the killings and other irregular activities.

But, please, spare Rodrigo Duterte. Go after the small fry. Drug war victims, particularly the thousands of poor people who were the collateral damage, deserve justice. The ICC badly wanted Duterte.

*The views expressed by the columnist do not necessarily reflect that of the media organization.