PNS — A $50-MILLION damage suit has been filed against former President Joseph Estrada, Senator Panfilo Lacson, and several other people before a United States court in connection with the murder of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000.
Dacer’s daughters Carina and Sabina filed the damage suit in San Francisco for compensatory and punitive damages, and following the “cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment, torture, and extra-judicial killing of their father,” the sisters said in a statement.
The other defendants in the case are Reynaldo “Butch” Tenorio, former chief executive of the Philippine Games and Amusements Corp.; businessman Dante Tan, former police Senior Supt. Michael Ray Aquino, former police Supt, Glenn Dumlao, and former police Chief Insp. Vicente Arnado.
Tan was implicated in the BW stock manipulation scandal, while Aquino is still detained in a US prison and waiting for a court decision on his extradition case.
The Dacer sisters cited the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act, both American statutes, as their basis for filing the damage suit.
They said the statutes allowed US courts to hear cases of human rights abuses brought by foreign citizens against the officials of a foreign government for conduct committed anywhere in the world.
Salvador Dacer’s clients had included many of the top figures in Philippine politics, and notably Presidents Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada. He and his driver were abducted in Makati City and were later executed, and their vehicle dumped.
Lacson, a former chief of the National Police and former head of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, was tagged as one of the masterminds of the killings.
He flew to Hong Kong two days before the filing of a case against him in a Philippine court. Myra Fernandez, then presiding judge of the Regional Trial Court Branch 18, issued a warrant for his arrest on Feb. 5, 2010.
The Justice Department gave credence to the affidavit submitted by former police officer Cezar Mancao II, the physical evidence gathered from the scene of the crime, and the affidavits of the other witnesses in the case. Mancao accused Lacson as the one who had ordered the execution of Dacer and his driver.
The Justice Department recommended no bail for Lacson. It said the senator could not invoke parliamentary immunity from arrest and detention as that applied only to crimes that were punishable below three years in jail. He faces up to life in jail if proven guilty.
Lacson aside, 21 former policemen and civilian agents of the defunct police task force have been charged in court in connection with the case.