Finally, as DOJ Assistant Secretary Eliseo Cruz underscored last March 29, 2024, the laboratory equipment and instruments at the clandestine shabu laboratory at Palta Small, Virac was finally destroyed nearly eight years after it was discovered.
The court-ordered destruction of part of the evidence (the chemicals have yet to be transported to Metro Manila for lack of permit) does not mean the case against the two accused and others still at large will soon be resolved, the DOJ exec stressed during the press conference.
It just relieves the Catanduanes PNP of responsibility, and the necessary expense, of guarding the 1,000-square meter compound 24/7 for the past seven years and six months.
Until the chemicals, including those spilled or exposed to the elements, are removed from inside the now dilapidated building, the platoon of police officers will have to stay on for a few more weeks.
As lamented by officials of the PNP and PDEA, there would be no proper comparison of the inventory of equipment and chemicals done shortly after the Nov. 26, 2016 discovery of the shabu lab with those removed and/or destroyed last week.
The passage of time, rust and the damage wrought by the elements, including super typhoon Rolly in 2020, had unfortunately erased the markings on several items.
Surely, by the time the Makati City Regional Trial Court Branch 62 decides on the merits of the case against former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) official Atty. Augusto Eric Isidoro and farm caretaker Lorenzo Flores Piñera II (the eight Chinese co-accused remain at large), there would be nothing left of the shabu lab except the building with its torn-up roof and damaged walls.
PDEA Regional Director Edgar Jubay vowed that the destruction of the shabu lab equipment, instruments and chemicals would be the last to be conducted in Catanduanes as long as he and fellow Catandunganon and PDEA Provincial Director IAV Roberto Sebastian are in office.
His solemn promise to islanders would surely be taken with a grain of salt by pessimists and doubters, especially with the two officers’ retirements looming in the near future.
Citizens lament that the issues and controversies surrounding the shabu lab could have been cleared up had the local police acted with haste once their suspicion regarding that solitary building along the highway in Palta Small was confirmed.
In hindsight, they could have done so and arrested everyone of the Chinese and their accomplices inside the building.
But the apparent involvement of certain law enforcement officials in the escape of those responsible is evident.
On the day of the ‘raid” on the lab, the Tribune learned from workers constructing a storm drainage in front of the shabu lab compound that several men armed with M-16 rifles and Cal. 45 pistols arrived at the site at about 2 PM of Nov. 25, 2016 on board several motorcycles with their plates removed.
The armed men wore bonnets and handkerchiefs tied around their heads, with only their eyes showing.
Wearing only T-shirts, shorts and slippers, they used a bolt cutter to snip off part of the barbed wire fence to the nearly farm where they seized the caretaker and brought him to the nearly shabu lab.
A short while later, the alleged warehouse owner and three other Chinese left the compound on board a maroon Mitsubishi Montero which was found abandoned in Manambrag.
The Chinese were ferried on motorized bancas to the mainland, where their frail vessels were partially sunk by heavy seas. The fugitives, clinging to rocky outcrops, were allegedly rescued later by fishermen hired by a local chief executive and taken to his beach resort.
Where the Chinese suspects are by now, we can only speculate. Are they still alive and cooking more shabu elsewhere or rotting below the ground?
These and other questions, including the identity of the lab’s financiers and protectors and the location of the missing P3 million diesel genset used om the shabu lab, will remain unanswered for now unless the Chinese chemists miraculously show up and testify before the court.