From Tempo (Sep 22): NPA leader freed on bail
TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol – A high-ranking leader of the New People’s Army (NPA) was released from the Bohol Detention And Rehabilitation Center (BDRC) on order of a trial court here after he posted bail worth nearly half a million pesos, officials said.
Roy Erecre, the leader of NPA’s Komiteng Rehiyonal Sentral Bisayas (KRSB) who had carried a P5.4- million bounty on his head, was freed from BDRC jail compound in Cabawan District, Tagbilaran, Friday, after his lawyers – City Councilor Adam Relson Jala and Victor Dela Serna (former O-I-C Bohol governor) – showed the release order reportedly signed by Regional Trial Court Executive Judge Suceso Arcamo to BDRC warden, Jail Chier Inspector Jose Rusylvi Abueva.
The lawyers immediately whisked Erecre away, on board Jala’s SUV cars, from the prison camp, which had become Erecre’s home since May this year.
Abueva said Erecre, a Boholano, was brought to Jala’s posh residence at Dao District, this city, for a dinner and reunion with the rebel leader’s family.
Before Erecre was arrested on May 6, 2014 in Davao City by combined elements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) and Philippine National Police (PNP), the Boholano NPA commander had been groomed to lead the entire operations of the NPA in the Philippines after the March 22, 2014 arrest of Tiamzon couple created a vacuum in the NPA national leadership.
Benito Tiamzon, chairman of the CPP-New People’s Army (NPA), and his wife Wilma Tiamzon, CPP-NPA secretary-general, were arrested in Cebu last March 22 by virtue of warrants of arrest for crimes against humanity, including murder, multiple murder, and frustrated murder charges.
The sudden twist of Erecre’s fate shocked both the military and the police here, as well as provincial officials.
Erecre was arrested on May 6, 2014 by virtue of several non-bailable warrants of arrest from regional trial courts in Cebu and Bohol for atrocities against civilians and government forces in Bohol in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a military report said.
http://www.tempo.com.ph/2014/09/npa-leader-freed-on-bail/
Sure looks like the military/police didn't see this one coming. Erecre appears to have some pretty high-level government connections in order to get out on bail. I wonder how long it will be before he "returns to the hills."
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