FORMER police Senior Supt. Glenn Dumlao is standing by his affidavit that Panfilo Lacson had a hand in the killing of publicist Salvador Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in 2000, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said yesterday.

He said Dumlao, who is supposed to arrive in Manila next week from the US, where he is being extradited, had issued a third affidavit affirming Lacson?s involvement in the double-murder case.

?He has issued a third affidavit upholding his first affidavit. He stands by what he said in his first affidavit,? Gonzalez said.

?Now as to whether his affidavit is enough to indict some people, I cannot comment on that yet.?

Dacer and Dumlao were abducted in broad daylight on the South Superhighway on Nov. 24, 2000, and by people believed to be members of the police force.

Their charred bodies were found four days later in a creek in Indang, Cavite.

Dumlao and former police Senior Supt. Cesar Mancao, another suspect in the case, had worked for Lacson, who was serving under President Joseph Estrada as head of a police task force against crime at the time of the killings. He is now a senator.

Lacson has denied involvement in the case, and so has Estrada, who was removed from power under a military-backed but peaceful civilian uprising in 2001 and replaced by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. He was convicted of plunder in September 2007, but Mrs. Arroyo pardoned him a few weeks later.

Mancao has similarly executed an affidavit linking high government officials in the case, and he is expected to arrive from the US this month to testify. He has asked the Justice Department to send NBI agents to fetch and mind him and not turn him over to the police.

Reynaldo Berroya, general manager of the state-run Metro Rail Transit Authority, said Thursday that Lacson had planned Dacer?s killing, and that Lacson had also wanted him dead. Berroya was head of the police Intelligence Group at the time of the killings.

In his first affidavit executed in 2001, Dumlao had tagged another Lacson aide, Michael Ray Aquino, as having ordered him to ?case? and kill Dacer. But in 2003 he executed another affidavit claiming he was pressured to pin down Lacson in the case.

Gonzalez said he could not yet reveal the contents of Dumlao?s third affidavit, but that Berroya, to whom he had surrendered after the killings, would corroborate his statements. Joyce Pangco Pa?ares