MANILA – Vice President Sara Duterte has slammed the Department of Justice (DOJ) for what she described as a baseless attempt to connect former President Rodrigo Duterte to the high-profile disappearances of online cockfighting (e-sabong) players during his term.
According to Duterte-Carpio, her father was incredulous when he learned that Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla was linking the missing sabungeros to the administration’s controversial war on drugs.
“Ang sabi lang niya (former President Duterte) na it is preposterous na i-link sa kanya ‘yung mga bones (na nakita sa Taal),” Duterte-Carpio said during her recent visit to the former president in The Hague, Netherlands.
She added she was not surprised by Remulla’s supposed eagerness to associate the case with her father.
Remulla earlier said that investigators were looking into potential links between individuals involved in the disappearances of the sabungeros and those behind extrajudicial killings during the drug war under Duterte’s presidency.
“I think that the deaths might intersect more on the death squads. The people who undertake the contractual killings may intersect somehow with the drug war and with the e-sabong,” Remulla said Monday.
“Same, may mga taong involved sa pagpatay ng tao sa drug war and in e-sabong. That’s as far as we can trace right now, but we will have to establish clearer links to each other,” he added.
Julie Patidongan, one of the accused in the disappearance of the sabungeros, previously claimed that businessman Charlie “Atong” Ang was the mastermind behind the abductions.
Patidongan also alleged that more than 100 sabungeros were killed between 2021 and 2022 and dumped around Taal Lake.
Ang has denied the allegation./PN
