Senate probers looking into the October 19 Glorietta Mall blast vowed to dig deeper amid conflicting claims by the Philippine National Police, which asserted it was triggered by a gas explosion against the findings of private investigators hired by the mall owners blaming it on a bomb attack by still- unidentified suspects.

Sen. Gregorio Honasan, who chairs the public order committee spearheading the ongoing inquiry, indicated they would tap the services of independent experts to help determine what really caused the explosion that killed 11 persons and wounded scores of mall shoppers.

Honasan added they still have to fix a date but his committee would also conduct its own ocular inspection of the blast site.

“We will consolidate the information [after that] and craft remedial legislation that is aimed at strengthening laws on public safety,” Honasan told reporters following a marathon hearing with the defense committee, chaired by Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, yesterday.

Emerging from the hearing, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. cautioned colleagues from making a conclusion affirming the findings of either the PNP or the Ayala-commissioned bomb investigators until they get a full report on the case.

“We should wait for the official report of the [independent experts], and compare this with the findings of the PNP and the Ayala-commissioned investigators…. Let us see the report first,” he added.

At the hearing, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile confronted the mall-owner representatives on why the Ayalas had to hire their own investigators when the police were already doing their own probe of the blast. “Was it to cover up?” Enrile asked.

Glorietta Mall president Jaime Ayala explained, however, that “we took it upon ourselves to find out what really happened.”

Ayala also told reporters after the hearing that a mall tenant notified them of a bomb threat two days before the blast.

But National Police Chief Avelino Razon said PNP investigators based their findings, among others, on the physical effects of the explosion.

“All indicators point to [gas buildup] as the cause, as we found no crater or center of explosion that would be present if it was triggered by a bomb,” a PNP prober told senators.

When Sen. Allan Cayetano noted that the confusion stemmed from a shift in initial findings by police probers who earlier claimed to have found traces of RDX, a major ingredient in military-issued C-4 explosives, police probers explained their initial findings were subsequently refuted by more extensive investigation of the blast site that prompted them to rule out a bomb attack.

JdV seeks House probe of ‘04 poll mess

LAKAS Rep. Jose de Venecia Jr. of Pangsinan said on Tuesday he would file a resolution calling on the House of Representatives to conduct a full-blown investigation into alleged attempts to rig the results of 2004 presidential elections.

Senate probers looking into the October 19 Glorietta Mall blast vowed to dig deeper amid conflicting claims by the Philippine National Police, which asserted it was triggered by a gas explosion against the findings of private investigators hired by the mall owners blaming it on a bomb attack by still- unidentified suspects.

A SUSPECTED leader of the Asian terror group Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI) and two of his local contacts were arrested by government security forces over the weekend in Davao Oriental.

A RANKING Malacañang official on Tuesday confirmed that he had “loaned” P500,000 to former Philippine Forest Corp. president Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. when the latter informed him that he was running out of funds while abroad—and not to keep him from testifying at the Senate hearing on the national broadband network-deal scandal.

THE fact-finding investigation of the Department of Justice (DOJ) virtually turned into a venue for Communications Assistant Secretary Lorenzo Formoso III to defend the government’s decision to award the US$329-million national broadband network (NBN) project to China’s ZTE Co.

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Forensic experts of the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Police have taken samples of body tissues for deoxyribonucleic acid tests to determine if the body that was exhumed on Monday in Tawi-Tawi is that of Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI)  bomber Dulmatin, a military official said.

THE Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday issued a status quo ante order enjoining the Commission on Elections (Comelec) from implementing its resolution ordering the revision of ballots in the 4,847 precincts in the province of Pampanga.

CITY OF MALOLOS—As personnel of the Waste Custodian Management Inc., the operator of the newly inaugurated sanitary landfill in Norzagaray town, are busy preparing for its inaugural operation, environmentalists in Bulacan have proposed alternatives to prevent the sanitary landfill from operating.