MANILA, Philippines - A police official on Tuesday belied claims of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV that the Special Action Force got their counterparts in the Philippine Army drunk to exclude them from the January 25 operation in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.
Director Benjamin Magalong, head of the Philippine National Police's Board of Inquiry and chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, said the senators may have been misinformed.
"I believe that Senator Trillanes was misinformed. We have already investigated that allegation. There is no truth to it," Magalong said.
DOCUMENT: PNP Board of Inquiry's Mamasapano Report
He also denied that some SAF troopers involved in the Mamasapano operation joined the supposed drinking spree.
"Nagkaroon ng fellowship, but SAF personnel were not involved," Magalong clarified, without elaborating.
Trillanes claimed that a PNP intelligence officer got some of the operatives involved in Operation Exodus drunk on the eve of Oplan Exodus' implementation.
READ: ‘SAF troopers got Army soldiers drunk before Mamasapano raid’
The operation plan is aimed at neutralizing Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan and Filipino terror bomber Basit Usman.
The SAF troopers were able to neutralize Marwan, but 44 of them were killed in the ensuing gunbattle with members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.