‘Spiritual awakening led Lascañas to tell on Rody’

MANILA, Philippines -Opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV said it was spiritual awakening after surviving kidney disease in 2015 that moved retired Davao police officer Arthur Lascañas to change his story about President Duterte’s involvement in murders in Davao many years ago.

But Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said it was because Lascañas had failed to get a permit to operate a small town lottery in Batangas province.

Whatever the reason, Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles urged the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) yesterday to arrest Lascañas over his admission of killing hundreds of people under the so-called Davao death squad.

Over radio station dzBB yesterday, Trillanes said the retired Lascañas found a new lease on life after having recovered his faith and began communicating with priests and nuns to fund the construction of a town chapel.

Such spiritual transformation, he said, was behind the former cop’s sudden turnaround.

“He knows he’s now a dead man walking, but he told me he was nudged by God,” Trillanes said. “I was initially suspicious when he was referred to me, but I felt shivers when he talked.”

Trillanes said the Lascañas he met last month was different from the one he first saw in October last year in a Senate hearing then chaired by Sen. Leila de Lima, where the former cop denied the existence of a Davao death squad.

But Lascanas’ story changed in a recent news conference presented by Trillanes at the Senate, backed by the Free Legal Assistance Group.

The former police officer said he was among those who killed local broadcaster and Duterte critic Jun Pala in 2003 on orders of the President, then mayor of Davao.

Saying Lascañas made an affidavit and had a video-recorded two-hour conversation with him, Trillanes said the retired police officer and self-confessed hit man began questioning his loyalty to Duterte and remembered he had a conscience after surviving kidney disease and saw the faces of hundreds of victims he and his fellow DDS members had killed in the past years. 

Trillanes quoted the priest who brought Lascañas to him that the former cop was close to death and was saved by a kidney transplant in 2015.

“He donated the chapel to atone for his sins,” Trillanes told dzBB. 

It was also during that time that Lascañas began writing a journal, where he signed every page detailing the things he’d done in the past, Trillanes said.

According to the senator, Lascañas was still in active duty with the rank of Special Police Officer 3 and receiving an extra monthly allowance of P100,000 from the Office of the Mayor until he retired in December last year.

But he said he no longer participated in consequent murders allegedly ordered by Duterte even until a few months after he was elected president.

Lascañas told Trillanes he was not yet ready to testify against Duterte last year at the Senate, as he had to prepare his family’s safety for that, and had lingering fears for his life.

But after bonding with his family, visiting various vacation and retreat spots in Baguio, Subic and other parts of the country, he decided to tell all.

What gambling has to do with it

In a separate radio interview, Aguirre said over the weekend Lascañas had lobbied but failed to get a permit from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to operate a Small Town Lottery (STL) in Batangas.

“We received report that Lascañas recanted his statement because the STL operations in Batangas were not given to him,” Aguirre said in Filipino. He did not elaborate.

Aguirre was asked about possible reason Lascañas recanted his previous testimony in the Senate clearing President Duterte in the alleged summary executions in Davao.

A STAR source said if indeed Lascañas lobbied to get the permit of STL in Batangas, he could have acted as a broker of a gambling lord, who was among those that applied for a permit to operate expanded STL. launched by the PCSO early this month.

– With Delon Porcalla