Drug trafficker arrested in Cebu among fatalities in latest Bilibid riot
MANILA, Philippines (Updated: 11:25 a.m.) — A convicted drug trafficker is one of the four fatalities in the latest riot at the New Bilibid Prison, the Department of Justice confirmed Wednesday.
DOJ Undersecretary Emmeline Aglipay-Villar, also department spokesperson, said an inmate named Calvin Tan died in the gang brawl at the Maximum Security Compound on Monday.
“Based on Calvin Tan’s prison record, he has the same first, middle and last name as Calvin Tan extradited from [Hong Kong] and the same age so we can already report that it is the same person,” she told reporters.
The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and police operatives arrested Tan and several others in a warehouse in Mandaue City manufacturing shabu in September 2004.
The Mandaue City Regional Trial Court Branch 28 in 2012 convicted Tan and 10 others on violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. The court ordered them to serve life imprisonment.
In the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum, Bureau of Corrections spokesman Gabriel Chaclag also confirmed that the drug trafficker is one of the inmates killed in the riot.
Chaclag said Tan is a member of the Sputnik gang, the rival of the Commando gang — the two groups involved in the riot.
Three other inmates died and 62 others were injured in the riot. Chaclag said that they found gunshot and puncture wounds in the fatalities.
The gang brawl happened a month after deadly incident in the same compound in Bilibid on October 9.
The National Bureau of Investigation is conducting a parallel probe into the earlier incident, following the order of Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra. The NBI’s investigation may also cover the recent gang brawl.
The DOJ chief, in the same forum, said that they received the NBI’s initial report on the incident, but noted that it contained the same information with BuCor’s report.
Guevarra said: “What I’ve been looking for, any lapse on the part of the administration there in preventing these things from happening.”
“We know how it came about, our interest is how to prevent these things from happening,” he added.
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