Thursday, March 31, 2011
TRACING Senator Panfilo Lacson's movements while in hiding for more than a year will be very difficult because he may have used a fake passport, a senator who once headed the immigration bureau said.
Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago said Wednesday that Lacson may have used a forged passport, adding when she was commissioner of the Bureau of Immigration, she found that the Philippines was "the fake passport capital of the world." She said the Department of Justice might not be able to find out who helped Lacson while on the run.
Lacson said Tuesday that he would take to his grave the names of friends who sheltered him after he turned fugitive in 2010.
He added the Department of Justice should instead focus on its own law enforcement agencies for failing to find him.
Also on Tuesday, Senator Antonio Trillanes IV said the DOJ would be wasting its time looking for Lacson's coddlers.
In a text message to reporters, Trillanes said the DOJ should instead focus on going after former government officials of the Arroyo administration who have been accused of corruption.
Senator Francis Escudero, for his part, said the DOJ should stop its "saber rattling."
He said the DOJ should "just do what it has to do with a view to fairly and equally applying the law and rendering justice.”
The senator emerged from hiding last Saturday after the Court of Appeals lifted warrants for his arrest in connection with the Dacer-Corbito double-murder case.