THE widow of South Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo has asked the Justice department to file more cases against those responsible for kidnapping and killing her husband.
Choi Kyungjin made the plea before the department’s prosecutors during the hearing on the reinvestigation of the case on Friday last week.
Despite the case, the number of South Koreans visiting the Philippines soared to a record 1.5 million last year and they spent a total of P70 billion, Senate Minority Leader Ralph Recto said.
He said a total of 5.967-million tourists flocked to the country in 2016 “for sun, sea and shopping,” with the South Koreans again topping the count.
In the Senate, Senator Panfilo Lacson on Sunday said it was wrong for President Rodrigo Duterte to say he had lost trust in the Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation following the abduction and killing of Jee.
“I think that statement is not right,” Lacson told dzBB radio.
“He should not lose trust in the constitutionally established institutions. You can lose trust but you cannot change the institution: You can change the leadership.”
Choi’s lawyer asked the prosecutors to include charges of carjacking and robbery against the policemen and several others tagged in Jee’s killing apart from kidnapping for ransom with homicide.
“His [Jee’s] motor vehicle was also taken [during the kidnapping),” Bryan Bantilan told the prosecutors.
He said the kidnappers took Jee’s black Ford Explorer and golf set when they took him from his home at the Friendship Subdivision in Angeles City on Oct. 18 last year along with his housemaid Marisa Morquicho.
Morquicho earlier tagged Senior Police Officer 3 Ricky Santa Isabel in the case and on Friday also appeared in the hearing for the preliminary reinvestigation of the case.
The PNP’s Anti-Kidnapping Group asked the Justice department to make Morquicho a private complainant in the case and not just a witness since she was also abducted by the respondents before freeing her later.
Besides Santa Isabel, the other accused in the case also appeared before the prosecutors: -Senior Police Officers 4 Roy Villegas and Ramon Yalung, Police Officer 2 Christopher Baldovino, Gerardo Santiago, Jerry Omlang and Christopher Alan Gruenberg.
Santiago, the retired police officer who owns the Gream funeral parlor where Jee’s body was cremated, has applied for the witness protection program after earlier surrendering to the National Bureau of Investigation, which conducted a parallel probe on the case, according to his lawyer Restituto Mendoza.
Omlang, a striker or errand boy in the NBI who also surrendered and confessed to his participation in the crime, has likewise sought protection after tagging Superintendent Rafael Dumlao of the PNP Anti-Illegal Drugs Group as mastermind in the case.
Dumlao did not appear before the hearing for security reasons, but he sent his lawyer who assured the panel that Dumlao, who is now under PNP restrictive custody, would appear when he submits his answer to the allegations.