DOJ to submit final list of convicts for manhunt

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Justice (DOJ) is aiming to submit the list of names of convicts to be hunted down by the Philippine National Police (PNP) by Oct. 1 and beat the deadline to do so today, Justice Undersecretary Markk Perete said yesterday.

In fact, members of the DOJ’s oversight committee met yesterday to further deliberate on and finish cleaning up the list of alleged prematurely released persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) and submit the list to the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) today.

The cleaned up list would bare the names of PDLs who were convicted of heinous crimes and were prematurely released because of good conduct time allowance (GCTA), and did not comply with President Duterte’s directive for them to surrender.

Last Sept. 26, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said they would turnover to the DILG a cleaned up list of these PDLs by Sept. 30, so that the PNP and the military could begin hunting them down and re-arrest them.

Originally, the re-arrest of PDLs was to start last Sept. 19, but the DOJ had asked that PNP and military operations be suspended because of errors in the 1,914 list of PDLs submitted by the Bureau of Corrections.

Among the errors spotted were some 40 former non-GCTA surrenderers, such as those who already had been pardoned or granted executive clemency, paroled or acquitted in court. Also, the turnout of the total number of surrenderers exceeded the 1,914 target convicts on the list.