Estrada the crime buster is busted

By Hope Ngo

(CNN) -- Joseph Estrada is being held in a facility that once housed the centerpiece of the deposed president's fight against crime.

He is in a detention cell used by an anti-crime squad he organized shortly after he was sworn into office in 1998.

The original mandate of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, or PAOCTF, was to go after big-time syndicated groups involved in felonies from smuggling to kidnapping.

Estrada's anti-crime group was tainted from the start. In 1995, the group's top officials, including its leader, Panfilo Lacson were implicated in the arrest and summary execution of members of a crime group known as the "Kuratong Baleleng".

The PAOCTF was later accused by opposition lawmakers of carrying out illegal surveillance operations on the political opposition and journalists.

The Philippine Star newspaper reports that the PAOCTF under Lacson had been linked to "the kidnapping for ransom and summary execution of legitimate Chinese businessmen, using anti-narcotics operations as cover-up, drug trafficking and other criminal activities."

Members of the PAOCTF have also been linked to the disappearance of a public relations man with close ties to former president Fidel V. Ramos.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered the PAOCTF to disband last week.

But the PAOCTF's detention facilities are still in use. As well as Estrada and his son, the detention center is holding a suspected terrorist, and an unspecified number of alleged drug lords.

The Philippine Star

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