Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson is expected to call on key witnesses in the gruesome kidnap-slay of Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo at the resumption of the Senate hearing on the tokhang-for-ransom case, an incident that has brought shame to the police force and prompted President Rodrigo Duterte to apologize to South Korea.
In a radio interview, Lacson, chair of the Senate committee on public order and dangerous drugs, said he would invite SPO4 Roy Villegas, an officer who detailed the Jee’s abduction and murder in October last year, and Gerardo Santiago, a former police officer who owns Gream Funeral Services, where the victim’s ashes were found.
Jee, who was abducted from his home on Oct. 18 in the guise of a drug raid, was killed inside Camp Crame, purportedly by anti-drug operative SPO3 Ricky Sta. Isabel. He had been dead for nearly two weeks when his kidnappers secured a P5-million ransom from his family.
The incident, which first came to light through an Inquirer interview with his wife Choi Kyung-Jin, has triggered the surfacing of other kidnap-extortion cases where police suspects use President Duterte’s anti-drug war as cover.
