MANILA - Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda on Wednesday dubbed as a "tall tale" an alleged assassination plot against self-styled Sultan Jamalul Kiram III and his adviser, Pastor "Boy" Saycon.

In a press briefing, Lacierda read a text message from National Security Adviser Cesar Garcia on the alleged assassination plot.

"Verification made by the intelligence community has yielded negative results so far. A check conducted on the alleged presence of certain named individuals in certain hotels also came up with negative results. Verification is still going on but off hand, the intel community is giving this report a very low probability," the message read.

During the presscon, Lacierda also showed a picture of slain Thai soldiers dated June 14, 2007.

He said this was the same picture Jacel Kiram showed to some members of the media a few days ago, but she misrepresented the photo by removing the date, saying that it was a picture of slain Malaysians from the Sabah stand-off.

"Ang daming tall tales na ikinukuwento nila. Ipaliwanag muna nila itong picture na ito ni Jacel. This is getting ridiculous. Everyday, they're coming up w/tall tales. People should stop  listening to tall tales," he said.

"We have had a sad experience of them misrepresenting themselves. So we leave it up to them to justify their assassination story," he added.

Sultanate spokesman Abraham Idjirani earlier claimed an 8-man hit squad led by a Malaysian is plotting to kill Kiram and Saycon. He identified a certain Sammy Ng as the leader of the alleged hit squad.

Saycon said the alleged plot was relayed to him by a lawyer-friend.