No PNP nego team, no intel, no manual —Yebra
By Benjamin B. Pulta
09/07/2010
To each his own thing, in negotiating releases of hostages, Philippine style.
Police hostage negotiator Supt. Orlando Yebra appeared before the inter-agency body investigating the Quirino Grandstand botched hostage rescue last Aug. 23 which resulted in the deaths of eight Chinese HongKong tourists along with the hostage taker, sacked police officer Rolando Mendoza.
Yebra admitted before the Incident Investigation and Review Committee (IIRC), that the Aug. 23 hostage-taking negotiation was a failure since lives were lost as he cited that the Philippine National Police (PNP) has no hostage-taking situation manual to guide hostage negotiators in dealing with this kind of serious scenario.
The country’s image is getting worse internationally, however. Some 1,000 package tours to the Philippines after eight Hong Kong tourists were killed in a bus hijacking in Manila, have been canceled, China’s state media said Monday
During the resumption of clarificatory hearings, Yebra, who was designated chief negotiator, also said the PNP has no official negotiating team to deal with hostage-taking situations.
At the same time, two IICR teams composed of prosecutors from the Department of Justice (DoJ) and officials from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) team left yesterday for Hong Kong to interview survivors as well as to possibly retrieve evidence that was inadvertently turned over to Hong Kong authorities.
.... MORESource: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20100907hed1.html
0 comments
Post a Comment