Lascañas still out of PHL –BI

“Wala pang arrival (of Lascañas) yet,” said the BI official in a text message.(PNA photo by Avito C. Dalan) JMC/acd

MANILA–Retired Senior Police Officer 3 Arthur Lascañas, a self-confessed member of the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS) failed to return to the country on Saturday as he earlier stated.

According to Bureau of Immigration (BI) Spokesperson Antonette Mangrobang, there is no record yet in their database that the former member of the Philippine National Police (PNP) has returned to the country on April 22.

“Wala pang arrival (of Lascañas) yet,” said the BI official in a text message.

Lascañas is set to return to the country over the weekend as indicated in his plane ticket when he left last April 8 supposedly for a vacation in Singapore.

The retired policeman earlier said that he is ready to face criminal investigation if summoned by authorities.

Lascañas had implicated President Rodrigo Duterte in the killings involving the DDS.

Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II noted that the retired policeman was allowed to leave since there were no cases filed or a hold departure order issued against him.

He also ordered the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to probe the confessions made by Lascañas to check their veracity as well as his criminal liabilities.

The former policeman denied the claim of self-confessed DDS member Edgar Matobato about the existence of the death squad and the killings the group allegedly carried upon orders of Duterte when he was still mayor of Davao, during the Senate inquiry last year on extrajudicial killings.

However, he recanted and said the squad really existed.

Lascañas also confessed being part of the death squad and claimed that Duterte paid them as much as PHP100,000 for each drug suspect killed.