Criminal charges were recommended against seven people implicated in the the abduction of murder convict Rolito Go and his nephew Klemens Yu inside the New Bilibid Prison on August 14 last year.
In a resolution, the Department of Justice found probable cause to charge Emilio Ortiz, Lawrence Yurong, Emerson Guazon, Fernando Francisco, Armando Mondero, Jerry Dueñas, and Reynaldo Tadtad.
They were being charged for violation of Article 267 of the Revised Penal Code for “kidnapping for ransom.”
Meanwhile, a certain “Kumander Rico” and several “John Does” or unidentified suspects were cleared “for lack of positive identification and showing of clear participation in the crime charged.”
Mondero himself was a former inmate at the NBP who was earlier arrested along Litex Road in Commonwealth, Quezon City. He was nabbed on the basis of a warrant of arrest issued by the Regional Trial Court Branch 19 in Malolos, Bulacan.
Go was convicted for the killing of Eldon Maguan, an engineering student, in 1991 in a traffic altercation in San Juan City.
“The Task Force resolved that it was established that the principal objective of the respondents in depriving complainants of their liberty was to obtain ransom money from the complainants’ family as can be gleaned by respondents’ repeated demands for the same,” the DOJ said.
According to the DOJ, suspects Dueñas, Mondero, and Yurong were positively identified by the victims.
Guazon, meanwhile, though not positively identified, matched the physical description made by Yu. It was Guazon who allegedly took Yu’s ATM cards and withdrew money from them.
Ortiz, tagged as the mastermind in the abduction, “purportedly gave marching orders to other respondents and provided necessary props indispensable to perpetrate the crime.”
Ortiz allegedly provided the other suspects with a vehicle, guns, and fake National Bureau of Investigation identification cards.
The DOJ said Ortiz and Tadtad’s alleged “lack of acquiescence and voluntariness” in the crime were evidentiary in nature and could be “best ventilated in court.”
Tadtad admitted that the safehouse in Batangas where Go and his nephew were kept belonged to his relatives.
Tadtad also allegedly guarded the victims inside the safehouse and disposed of Yu’s Honda Civic. —KG, GMA News
