Press Release
November 27, 2012

PIMENTEL URGES PROBE OF MSU KILLINGS

Senator Aquilino "Koko" L. Pimentel III, PDP Laban President, has urged the Senate to probe the recent double murder and arson inside the campus of Mindanao State University (MSU).

On 25 October 2012, Thursday at eight o'clock in the morning, four armed men entered Mindnolia, an internet café owned by 44-year-old MSU Professor Othello Cobal. The four gunmen shot Cobal in the head and Erwin Diaz, a student, was also manhandled and shot.

The hoodlums then set the internet café on fire together with the bodies of Cobal and Diaz.

In a resolution, Pimentel requested the Committee on Education, Culture, and Arts and other appropriate committees of the Senate to conduct an investigation in aid of legislation of this recent violence at MSU to further strengthen the safety and security not only within the MSU campus but other educational institutions and their vicinity as well.

"There is now a question of safety and security of the professors and of the students in MSU because of the recent double murder and arson committed inside the campus," Pimentel said.

The senator from Mindanao cited an article by Fr. Jun Mercado, OMI, who said that the MSU community has expressed outrage over the latest brutal double murder and arson that cap the many unsolved cases of banditry, kidnapping, rape, ambuscade, arson and practically all other forms of lawlessness on the campus.

Fr. Mercado lamented that there had been no apprehensions and not even a single suspect had been hauled to the police precinct for investigation or officially charged in court.

A statement of concern by the MSU Alumni Association called for external intervention to restore order and to recapture the past glory of the MSU.

Pimentel said the investigation is necessary as the Constitution mandates that the prime duty of the Government is to serve and protect the people, and that the State recognizes the vital role of the youth in nation-building and should therefore promote and protect their physical, moral, spiritual, intellectual, and social well-being.

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