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MANILA - A Philippine anti-corruption official accused of extorting money from the policeman who triggered a deadly hostage crisis has refused to testify about the allegation, a government minister said on Monday.
Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez said in a letter that she and her deputy, Emilio Gonzales, were turning down an invitation to attend a hearing on last month's hijacking, in which eight Hong Kong tourists and the hijacker were killed.
"We may not be able to compel them because we do not have coercive powers, but we feel that it is our moral duty to remind them of their own moral duty to cooperate," Justice Secretary Leila de Lima told a hearing of the special investigative body which she heads.
In previous hearings, policemen involved in the August 23 crisis testified that they had overheard the hijacker, sacked policeman Rolando Mendoza, accuse Gonzales of trying to extort money from him.
Mendoza had been fired by the Ombudsman's office for corruption, and, in a bid to get his job back, hijacked a bus carrying 22 tourists, triggering a 12-hour standoff that ended in a bungled police raid and bloodshed.
"If anyone dies here, it will be your fault," Mendoza had told Gonzales in a telephone call, according to policemen testifying at De Lima's hearing.
Gonzales has previously denied Mendoza's accusations in several interviews with the press.
De Lima said at the hearing that the probe body had renewed its invitation to Gutierrez and Gonzales to testify, after they had initially declined previous invitations, citing the independence of the Ombudsman's office.
Gutierrez had told the inquiry the Ombudsman's office should not involve itself in the probe since it may have to investigate cases related to the hostage crisis, De Lima added.
The hostage fiasco has outraged Hong Kong's residents and government and embarrassed the Philippine government, with police officials admitting that they made numerous mistakes.
These blunders included leaving their posts when the gunman began shooting and not using the force's best-trained unit in the assault.
During Monday's hearing, the policeman who spoke to Mendoza during the crisis admitted police did not have an official hostage negotiation team.
Police Superintendent Orlando Yebra was normally deployed as the legal officer of the Manila police district but acted as its chief hostage negotiator when required, he told the inquiry.
"Officially, there is no negotiation unit yet in the PNP (national police)," he said. "I proposed... the creation of that already," he said, but his seniors had failed to act on his recommendation.
Yebra said that, during last month's day-long siege, he was given no intelligence support and did not have a complete picture of the hostage-taking even hours after the crisis began.
He said a police psychologist could have helped him assess the hostage-taker's state of mind.
Meanwhile, testifying at the inquiry, a brother of the hijacker, police officer Gregorio Mendoza, denied accounts by other witnesses that he had urged his brother not to surrender during the hostage crisis.
But the younger Mendoza, who is out on bail on a charge of obstructing the hostage negotiators, was evasive when asked why he apparently panicked when the police tried to make him leave the hijacking scene.
Officials said his resistance apparently enraged his brother, and caused him to start shooting moments later.
- AFP/al
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