Nine years have passed since publicist Salvador ?Bubby? Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito were kidnapped, killed and burned. Now the alleged main plotters of the sensational double murder case may soon be brought back to face the music that they have avoided for so long by hiding in the United States.

Former police senior superintendent Cesar Mancao II, one of three top cops who fled to the US after being linked to the Dacer-Corbito disappearances in 2000, has reportedly executed an affidavit containing all that he knows about the case. Mancao and another fugitive police official, Glenn Dumlao, had been arrested on the strength of complaints lodged by the Philippine government with US authorities.

A third police officer who fled to the States, Michael Ray Aquino, is now detained in a federal penitentiary after he was found guilty of possessing classified information that he apparently was sending back to some officials in the Philippines. Aquino was not found guilty of the more serious charge of espionage, but was sentenced to jail for the lesser offense anyway.

Mancao, Dumlao and Aquino are all about to be extradited to the Philippines to face trial on the Dacer-Corbito case. All three were top officials of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force headed by then National Police Chief Panfilo Lacson, who is now a senator.

The daughters of Dacer believe that all three officers had a hand in the disappearance of their father. One of the Dacer girls, Amparo, insists that Lacson himself ordered the officers to liquidate her father because the publicist was working for a chief rival of the current senator for the leadership of the National Police, former director general Roberto Lastimoso, whom Amparo Dacer said Lacson was trying to dislodge from the top PNP post.

Former President Fidel Ramos has alleged that killings had been ordered by his successor at Malaca?an Palace. Then President Joseph Estrada was said to have been incensed at Dacer for working with former President Fidel Ramos to destabilize the former?s government.

In the aftermath of the disappearance of both victims, the government would launch a series of searches for their bodies, which would later be found burned in a ditch in Indang, Cavite. Eighteen persons?including 11 members of Lacson?s task force?would later be indicted for the killings.

Lacson and Estrada?who would, a short time after the Dacer disappearance, be ousted from the presidency?have vehemently denied any involvement in the sensational disappearances. Lacson has repeatedly stated that attempts to link him to the case are the handiwork of the Arroyo administration, in retaliation for his various expos?s in the Senate alleging anomalies committed by the current government.

* * *

But the affidavit executed by Mancao and submitted to US authorities as part of his extradition proceedings promises to be a real breakthrough in the case. The immediate?and adverse?reaction of Lacson to news about the affidavit has already generated a lot of buzz about its still-undisclosed contents.

Lacson said that the last time he talked to Mancao, the latter said he was being ?pressured? to sign an affidavit on the Dacer case. The senator quoted Mancao as saying that some people were making him link Lacson to the case ?even if both of us have no knowledge of the incident.?

Lacson said Mancao told him that the head of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Brig. Gen. Romeo Prestoza, had offered to reinstate Mancao in the police service and even of a promotion in exchange for implicating Lacson in the double murder. Lacson identified the source of the pressure on Mancao as ?Malaca?ang, because I?m the only one who exposes the corruption of the people there.?

News of the affidavit?s existence?and of its supposedly explosive contents?reached Manila through the lawyer of the Dacer family, Demetrio Custodio. Custodio said he was informed by Carina Dacer, another daughter of the slain publicist who now lives in New York, that Mancao signed the affidavit last Feb. 14.

Carina told Custodio that she personally talked to Mancao in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, during a hearing of the extradition case of the former police officer. ?Mr. Mancao has executed an affidavit by sworn statement revealing all that he knows in the Corbito-Dacer case. [H]e has also identified those that he knows were involved in the crime,? Custodio said.

The contents of the Mancao affidavit?as well as the return of the three principal suspects in the case?may put the heat on Lacson and even Estrada once again, a little over a year before the national elections. Years after the dismissal of the charges that Lacson and his men ordered the cold-blooded killing of some members of the so-called Kuratong Baleleng robbery gang in Quezon City, the Katzenjammer Kids of the task force will once more take the spotlight as suspects in a celebrated case that has remained unresolved and that many thought would remain that way for good.

No date has been set for the return of Mancao, Dumlao and Aquino to face charges on the Dacer-Corbito case. But reports from the US say that all three have decided to stop fighting their extradition in court, so that may happen sooner rather than later.

Political implications aside, the reopening of the case will at the very least give comfort to the families of both victims, who have many times thrown up their hands in dismay at the slow pace of justice in this country and the failure to bring the suspects back to face the charges against them. Like Lacson said yesterday, we hope that Mancao and the others will finally tell the whole truth?and nothing but?upon their return.