LOZADA CONNECTS PALACE TO COVER-UP,...

Lozada being comforted by a nun during a break in yesterday’s day-long hearing. SONNY ESPIRITU

Lozada connects Palace to cover-up, ‘abduction’

SENATE witness Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. yesterday narrated on live national television a fixating tale of abduction and cover-up, whose trail leads, he claimed, all the way to Malacañang.

Lozada, with tears streaming from his eyes, said he sought and was given assistance by Deputy Executive Secretary Manuel Gaite, upon the advice of Environment Secretary Joselito Atienza—whose department supervises Philippine Forest Corp., where Lozada is president—to fabricate official travel documents to London so he could dodge a Senate summon to testify on the controversial national broadband deal.

But Lozada only flew to Hong Kong and, on Atienza’s reading of the situation that the controversy had already died down, returned a few days later on Feb. 5, into the arms of trouble.

Atienza, by Lozada’s account, had failed to advise him that a group of security men would pick up Lozada at the airport to prevent a waiting Senate team to arrest him.

Lozada, who until that day had refused to appear before the Senate, said he protested at being whisked away, explaining to his armed escorts that family members were also waiting for him at the airport.

“Hindi, hindi, ipinapakuha ka sa amin, (No, no, we are under orders to fetch you),” was what his “abductors” had told him in answer, as he was fetched from the tube to a restricted hallway and elevator that led down to the tarmac. “Basta sir, relax lang, relax lang. Wala kaming gagawin sa iyo (Just relax, sir, we will not harm you).’’

A 1984 electronics and communications engineering graduate of the University of Santo Tomas, Lozada said he was whisked away in a Toyota Corolla Altis, with a driver and one officer riding in front, and him on the back seat.

He said he was brought around the airport complex and onto the adjacent Villamor Air Base while his abductors listened to communication equipment that, he claimed, allowed them to even eavesdrop on the radio transmissions made by the Senate team.

“They [abductors] told me they were going to bring me to Dasmariñas, Cavite, so I put my cell phone on silent mode and sent my brother a text message saying someone had abducted me,” he told a spell-bound Senate in Tagalog. “So naturally, my family was really, really alarmed.”

Lozada said he told his brother to do his best to triangulate his radio signal as the Altis neared Southwoods Golf and Country Club.

“I suddenly remembered [the fate of publicist Salvador “Bubby”] Dacer,” Lozada said, referring to the murdered publicist who was found near the area dead along with his driver in November 2000.

The Dacer family later accused then police chief, now Senator Panfilo Lacson of having masterminded the abduction.

After that text message, Lozada said, the armed escorts told him to stop sending text messages because they, too, were being intercepted by them. They continued driving around until they reached Los Baños, Laguna, where his armed guards received another phone call.

“Bring him back, bring him back. The media is too hot’,” Lozada recalled the front seat escort ordering the driver in Tagalog.

On their way back, Lozada said their group stopped twice so Lozada could draft a letter, making it appear that he had requested for security assistance at the airport. Having accomplished what Lozada said was asked of him, the escorts then said: “Sir, we’re turning you over to the police.”

Lozada recalled Atienza having called him twice during the three-hour ride to assure him: “Jun, stop worrying, just relax. The people you’re with are our people. Just relax.”

Atienza, in a subsequent statement to the press, admitted having asked the police to provide security for Lozada, but denied discouraging Lozada from testifying before the Senate on the controversial national broadband network deal.

Lozada recalled, after having briefed Atienza about the national broadband network agreement between the government and China’s ZTE Corp., that Atienza had warned him to keep his lips sealed, lest “the government fall to the opposition.”

“There’s a lot of distortion of genuine facts,” Atienza protested. “There’s no kidnapping at all. At this point, I’m really worried that the public is getting a wrong impression because of the repeated claims that there [was] kidnapping.”

Atienza likewise rejected allegations that Lozada’s trip to Hong Kong was arranged to evade the Senate hearing on the broadband deal.

“He [Lozada] had requested for that trip. He asked for help before he even came home,” Atienza said.

Lozada said his long-time friend and former boss, Commission on Higher Education chairman Romulo Neri, also called him while Lozada was being driven around by the armed men.

“Jun, calm your wife down,” Lozada recalled Neri as advising him. “She’s panicking in front of media. Call her.”

He, in turn, told Neri that his wife Violeta could not do so until she sees him.

Lozada said his armed escorts dropped him around 9 p.m. at the Outback steak house in Libis, Quezon City where he was turned over to Supt. Paul Mascariñas and Neri’s lawyer Antonio Bautista.

After dinner, Lozada said he asked Bautista if he could go home, but the lawyer advised against it because reporters may still be waiting. So Lozada asked that he be brought to La Salle Greenhills instead, where, unknown to his escorts, his children and wife had already sought sanctuary.

The following day, Lozada said his armed escorts, who kept vigil in La Salle as well, brought him to Bautista’s office where he filled out blanks in an affidavit before signing the document. He said he had some reservations about the affidavit, but was told by Bautista to just sign it “for the comfort of Malacañang.”

He was then brought back to Greenhills, where Mascariñas returned later that night with a ready-made letter addressed to the National Police, with Lozada asking for police protection.

Mascariñas returned a second time with another letter, this time asking Lozada’s sister Carmen, to sign it, which she refused with much protestation.

“I did not reach the age of 60 just so I could sully my own name,” Lozada said, quoting his sister.

Source: http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=news1_feb9_2008