"Desperate, defensive moves" - that was how Bacolod NBI chief Philip Pecache yesterday described the charges filed Wednesday by officials of a security agency and a resort in Pamplona town against National Bureau of Investigation agents from Bacolod City which, he said, are meant to counter the cases set to be filed against them by government authorities.

They are nothing but the products of fertile imaginations, Pecache further said of the charges for robbery with violence and intimidation, kidnapping and serious detention, grave threats and planting of evidence against the NBI agents and their companions.

They are designed to divert the issue away from the fact that they obstructed the NBI enforcement of a court order, and that the members of the NBI team were beaten up by policemen and civilians at the Pamplona Golf and Country Club on Saturday, Pecache said.

The NBI team had gone to the Pamplona Golf and Country Club on Saturday to serve a search warrant for illegal firearms on Korean businessman Ha Hae Bong.

The Region 7 PNP and NBI officials tasked with investigating the Pamplona incident will decide what charges will be filed against the policemen and civilians involved in the beatings, Pecache said.

Named by Leah Bobon, officer-in-charge of the Pamplona Plantation Center Inc., and Zosimo Catalan, manager of Cordial Security Agency, in two separate complaints filed Wednesday before Negros Oriental Provincial Prosecutor 1 Macarieto Trayvilla, were NBI agents Menci Mamaspas and Ed Kawada, NBI consultants Bernie Belleza and Frnacis Ramos, BID employees Cyrun Alosan, alias Syrus Alazan, and Eric Jamio, alias Eric Plamco, Henry Arellano of the NBI, Korean pastor Kim Seong Kook of Villa Angela Subdivision, Brgy. Villamonte, Bacolod City, and two John Does.

Bobon and Catalan charged the ten men for violation of Section 29 of Republic Act No. 9165 on the alleged planting of evidence when they went to the Pamplona Golf and Country Club to serve a search warrant on Ha Hae Bong.

Catalan also charged the ten for robbery with violence and intimidation for divesting security guards of his agency of two shotguns and one revolver when they went to the golf club.

Another security guard, Alfredo Elmaco, charged Kawada, Arellano, Mamaspas, and one John Doe for kidnapping and serious detention and grave threats at the north national highway at the junction going to Judyville Subdivision in Sibulan on Feb. 7. *CPG

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