MANILA, Philippines — Businessman Atong Ang and actress Gretchen Barretto will be included as suspects in the case of missing sabungeros (cockfighting aficionados), said Justice Sec. Jesus Crispin Remulla on Thursday.

Remulla made the pronouncement after a certain Julie “Dondon” Patidongan, a former security chief in Ang’s cockfight arenas, tagged the businessman as the mastermind behind the missing sabungeros, and linked Barretto to the disappearances.

“They will be included. Because they were named, then we will have to include them as suspects,” said Remulla in a chance interview.

He then said that formal cases will be filed against the two personalities “sooner than later.”

Remulla: Atong Ang, Gretchen Barretto to be named suspects in missing sabungeros case
“Sooner than later, it will happen. That will be evaluated by our group of fiscals who will be assigned to evaluate all the evidence so that we will know what cases to be filed properly,” disclosed Remulla.

“Because, of course, there are specific cases that require elements of a crime that we as prosecutors can prove,” he added.

When asked if there is enough evidence in the allegations made against the personalities behind the missing sabungeros case, Remulla responded: “there may be enough.”

“In fact, sometimes you can suffer from indigestion on the information that comes out or that came out from the statements given and even parts of the documents that were submitted to us,” said Remulla.

“So we just have to thoroughly weigh everything. There’s a lot more police work involved than anything else,” he added.

However, Remulla also maintained that the recent statements made by Ang, as well as Patidongan, will no longer affect the investigation being made by the DOJ and authorities.

This, he said, is due to the fact that the DOJ has been investigating the case for the past three years.

“When we took it up again with [Philippine National Police chief] Gen. Nicolas Torre, we really started digging up a lot of things already. We really dug up a lot of things here,” he said in Filipino.

According to Remulla, they also know of 20 personalities in the so-called alpha list or the list of names alleged to be behind the disappearances and are already investigating it.