MANILA, Philippines – Even dead men were included in the arrest list of the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) relayed to the Philippine National Police (PNP).

In a press briefing on Thursday, September 19, National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) chief Major General Guillermo Eleazar said at least 2 men listed as living in Metro Manila who were freed convicts through the controversial Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) law are already dead.

“We have accounted for 2 persons already dead,” Eleazar said at the Camp Bagong Diwa conference room in Taguig City.

Who were the two? First was a certain Veloria Bernardo, a convict for a drugs case, who was released in July 2015. He died of a heart attack in 2018.

The second was a robbery with homicide convict named Virgilio Posias, who was released in May 2016, but died “months after” due to lung cancer.

What does this mean? The mishaps are the result of the faulty record-keeping by the BuCor, which admitted in a Senate hearing that they rushed the list and did not check it enough before turning it over to the PNP.

Rappler also obtained a copy of the list of 1,914 released prisoners the government said were heinous crime convicts released through the GCTA. It turned out, not all of them were released through the good conduct law.

Eleazar said he expected other errors in the list as their findings were only derived from checking 50 names of convicts released in the National Capital Region. They are checking over 150 more, sending tracker teams to their registered addresses at midnight, September 20. – Rappler.com