THE Department of Justice has assigned 16 prosecutors to investigate the 177 Indonesians earlier caught by Immigration authorities for illegal possession of Philippine passports while attempting to leave the country for Saudi Arabia to participate in the hajj to Mecca.
“We are getting their depositions-sworn statement before they are deported to Indonesia,” Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II told reporters.
Aguirre said Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Theodore Villanueva would supervise the taking of the depositions of the Indonesians.
The prosecutors have been tasked to determine how the said Indonesian managed to obtain Philippine passports.
The Indonesians were about to board an early morning flight on August 19 for Madinah, Saudi Arabia, when Immigration personnel stopped them, along with five Filipinos who were supposed to accompany them in their trip.
Based on initial investigation, the Indonesians fraudulently secured Philippine passports in an attempt to join the hajj from September 9 to 14, using quota reserved for Filipino pilgrims by the Saudi government.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said the passengers’ real identities were discovered after they failed to speak Tagalor or any of the Philippine dialect when interviewed by Immigration authorities.
Morente noted that the Indonesians could only converse in English.
The Indonesians eventually confessed not being Filipinos, and that they paid between $6,000 to $10,000 each to their Filipino escorts who organized the pilgrimage.
The Indonesians recounted that they arrived individually as tourists in the past few weeks before their pilgrimage was facilitated by their escorts.
Morente said the operation was conducted after the Bureau of Immigration (BI) Intelligence Division gathered information that a group of Indonesians with Philippine passports were scheduled to leave through the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on August 18 and 19.
Meanwhile, the BI also announced that charges of violation of the Philippine Immigration Act have been filed against 18 Taiwanese and seven Chinese who were allegedly involved in illegal drugs and cybercrime operations in Boracay and Aklan.
Charged for being undesirable aliens were Taiwanese Lin Szu Wei, Hsiao Chun-Huang, Zeng Shao-Wei, Chang Chih-Chih, Fan Yu-Lung, Chen Jhih-Hong, Chou Yuan-Syun, Wu Pei-Yu, Weng Wei-Chieh, Yang Shuang-Chuan, Wu Shau-Wei, Lien Yu-Ting, Sun Chia-Hui, Wang Yung-Chun, Jhou Tian-You, Hong Gou-Siou, Chou Hsi-Ao and Lo Li-Yin; and Chinese nationals Zhou Hong Hua, Zeng Hui, Han FengShuang, He Zonglong, Zhong Yuling, Wang Juan and Gong Chun.
Morente disclosed that the 18 Taiwanese and seven Chinese were charged for being undesirable aliens and will undergo deportation proceedings.
However, despite the deportation charges, the aliens will not be deported pending resolution of the criminal cases that were filed against them before the court.
“It is only after they have served their sentences, if convicted, that we will deport and include them in our blacklist to prevent them from reentering our country,” Morente added.
The suspects were arrested while inside a two-story rented house, which served as a distribution point for various types of illegal drugs and the base of operations of a cybercrime group.