|
By Ric R. Puod and
Johnna Villaviray, Senior Reporters
MASTER Sgt. Pablo Martinez said he lied about
everything he knew about the Aquino assassination.
But now 66 and a born-again Christian pastor,
Martinez said he is prepared to help the authorities go after the
plotters of the murder who have so far eluded the judgment of the
court and of history.
Martinez, despite the possibility of perjury,
said he wants to clear his conscience before he meets his Maker.
“I am old now. What is important to me is to
have a clear conscience,” he said. He now goes by the name Brother
Paul of God’s Victorious Army.
“Besides, there is no use being a pastor if I
continue lying about [Aquino’s assassination].” Talking to The
Times, Martinez said he was not part of the team sent to the Manila
International Airport to secure Aquino exactly 20 years ago tomorrow
(Thursday), but was there on an “illegal order” by the
“invisible group” that plotted the murder.
This was the first indication that the killing
was plotted by people higher than any of the 15 soldiers and
policemen now languishing at the national penitentiary for two
counts of murder.
Martinez recalled that he fled for cover behind
the luggage trolleys a few feet away from the SWAT van that was
supposed to be Aquino’s vehicle. And, for the first time, Martinez
said he sensed his life was in danger.
He rushed to the van but Sgt. Arnulfo de Mesa
intercepted and handed him the gun purportedly used by Rolando
Galman, whom the Marcos government blamed for Aquino’s death.
Sgt. Arnulfo Artates said he noticed Martinez in
the tarmac shortly before the China Airlines bearing Aquino parked
at Bay 8. He saw Martinez tailing a man in blue, referring to Galman,
who was in the uniform of an airport crewman.
Artates wanted to question Martinez’s presence
but Captain Valerio snapped: “Just shut up.”
He interpreted this order to mean that Martinez
was there on a mission.
Martinez said there was no rush to take
Aquino’s body to the Fort Bonifacio Hospital, since the SWAT van
used to evacuate Aquino first took Valerio to the Military Security
Unit, where the captain talked with MSU officials. Afterward,
Valerio, Martinez, Tech. Sgt. Claro Lat and an MSU official went to
have lunch in a nearby clubhouse.
Aquino’s death was a triumph for the
“invisible group”–the charismatic politician no longer posed a
threat to the Marcos regime.
A day after the killing, Gen. Fabian Ver,
Marcos’s military chief of staff, visited the members of the
Aviation Security Command and ordered them confined in connection
with Aquino’s murder.
Martinez said Ver appeared delighted.
“Sir, this is the First Sergeant,” Col.
Romeo Ochoco said, introducing Martinez to Ver.
This version of events was never taken seriously
by the Agrava Fact-Finding Board, chaired by the late Justice
Corazon Agrava. The board held 125 days of hearings, summoned 196
witnesses whose testimonies were recorded in more than 20,300 pages
of transcripts, but all that was insufficient to determine the
brains behind the murder.
Among the evidence collected was Galman’s
diamond ring that, Martinez said, Galman bought on the night of
August 19.
Former senator Juan Ponce Enrile, Marcos’s
defense secretary, acknowledged that he has suspicions about who the
mastermind was, but said he would take that secret “to the
grave.”
“I won’t tell you anything about my
suspicion. That suspicion will go with me to the grave. Why? Because
that is [just] my suspicion,” he told The Times.
Enrile said he was not asked about it when he
testified before the board, and that he would “exercise great
caution” even if he were.
“I’m a free man. I cannot be compelled to
explain or even intimate or suggest my own suspicion about
anything.”
The assassination was so well plotted that the
plotters eluded suspicion during the six-year term of Aquino’s
widow, Corazon.
Deputy Speaker Raul M. Gonzalez, who served as
Tanodbayan, or Ombudsman, in 1983, said former President Aquino
admitted she was dissatisfied with the 1990 Supreme Court that
convicted Martinez’s group to reclusión perpetua, or life
imprisonment.
The Court’s decision, written by then-Chief
Justice Claudio Teehankee, convicted 16 military men, including
Avsecom chief, Brig. Gen. Luther Custodio. Custodio did not serve
time, because he was ill with cancer.
On his deathbed he maintained that he had no
direct knowledge of the assassination, according to his defense
lawyer, Rodolfo Jimenez.
“I hope you remember what I had told you
before that I had nothing to do with this,” he told Jimenez. “If
I have to spend my last centavo to ferret out who’s responsible
[for the assassination], I’ll do it.”
Enrile blamed Mrs. Aquino for not exercising her
full executive powers to unearth the brains behind the
assassination.
“When I was a senator and Cory was the
President, I urged her to use the full powers of her office to
ferret out whoever were responsible for the assassination. If I were
the President and my wife or my relative was killed, I would not
hesitate to exercise my power, not because that person is my wife or
my relative, but because I am supposed to do justice to every man,
including my wife and my relative. That’s her oath of office.”
Gonzalez and Jimenez are inclined to believe
that Galman was the triggerman, but acknowledged that it was
convenient to insist that Aquino’s escorts killed him, because it
was the easiest way to implicate Marcos.
“I think the country is still looking for the
mastermind, because even assuming that Galman was the real killer,
we really can’t deny what was his motive. Somebody must have done
it and he must have manipulated that,” Gonzalez said.
He acknowledged that the Aquino family was
partly to blame for the fact that the case remains unsolved, citing
a crucial witness who allegedly had an intimate relationship with
Maj. Gen. Romeo Gatan, the head of the Philippine Constabulary’s
Northern Luzon Command.
“We might have blown the case wide open and
established who is the mastermind with that woman, but we could not
guarantee her safety unless Mrs. Aquino agreed to help. But Mrs.
Aquino refused,” he said.
With Martinez’s disclosure about the
“invisible group,” Gonzalez said it is necessary to arrest these
middle officers to identify the brains behind the killing. The Times
learned that Ochoco had left the country for Australia shortly
before the case was reopened in the Sandiganbayan, but in a Times
inquiry through a number of Filipino communities there and through
the Australian Embassy in Manila, none claimed to have known Col.
Romeo Ochoco.
Gonzalez said Ochoco’s military record does
not show if he has resigned or retired.
Valerio also had incomplete records with the
Military Personal File, according to Maj. Narciso Erna of the Office
of the Adjutant General in Camp Aguinaldo. Valerio left the country
for the United States, where he supposedly changed his name to
“Edwin Salvador.” He is believed to be living in Los
Angeles, California.
Ten days after Aquino’s assassination, or on
August 31, 1983, General Gatan surrendered his regular insurance
policy (No. 1557775) in the Government Service Insurance System,
according to Marlyn de la Fuente, a staffer at the Customer
Relations and Monitoring Department. He died on August 8 of
aneurysm.
With Gatan’s death, the probability of
unearthing the brains behind Aquino’s murder has become more
remote.
But aside from Martinez’s group and a handful
of individuals, the Aquinos and the nation appear content putting
the blame on Marcos while enjoying the liberties of democracy that
Aquino’s martyrdom bequeathed to the country.
Says Rep. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III: “We
were traumatized by the travesty of justice. We could have come out
with a decision that would satisfy [the family], but in the end, it
might not turn out as it should.”
(To be continued)
|
