CALOOCAN Bishop Pablo Virgilio David said Monday he was willing to turn over the witnesses to the killing of Kian Loyd delos Santos, including his family, to the police anytime if they wished to leave the Church’s protective custody.
“I am ready to release the family and other witnesses anytime if they want to,”David said after Roy Concepcion, the father of a key witness to the killing of Delos Santos, refused police custody and instead sought the Church’s protection.
“I assure them that we are here whenever they need the Church’s help,” David said.
He made the statement even as Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez on Monday sought a congressional investigation into the spate of killings involving minors.
He echoed the concern of President Rodrigo Duterte who claims a deliberate plot to discredit the government’s campaign against illegal drugs. “We really need to look into it,” Alvarez told a television interview.
“There is a deliberate attempt to kill these minors, and we have to find out what is the motive. To instigate hatred against the administration?”
Alvarez said the drug lords could have been behind the effort to sabotage the anti-drug campaign to stop it but admitted politics was also a possible motive.
In Malacañang, Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella said that while there were “certain elements” actively engaged in discrediting the police, a proper investigation should be conducted to validate the claims.
“The President himself has introduced that idea, that insight. It seems that at this stage there are probably those who are involved in making sure that the campaign—his campaign—is actually discredited,” Abella said.
Earlier, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said Bishop David and the others who had taken custody of one of the key witnesses in the killing of Delos Santos, Grade 11 student, could be charged with obstruction of justice.
The bishop now stands as the guardian of one of the witnesses and the child’s siblings and lately their father, Roy Concepcion, after the latter was freed on bail and decided to be protected by the Church.
“Personally, I have no problem with it. I am ready to release them,” David said.
“In fact, I even prepared a letter to be signed by the witness and her father,” David said.
He appealed to the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption and the Criminal Investigation and Detention Group to take care of them.