NDF tags former rebels in massacre: PNP

From the Visayan Daily Star (Nov 5): NDF tags former rebels in massacre: PNP

The four suspects implicated by the National Democratic Front-Negros as allegedly involved in the Sagay 9 massacre, turned out to be former communist rebels, who got the ire of the New People’s Army for their active involvement in the counterinsurgency operations of the Philippine Army, a police official said yesterday.

NDF-Negros spokesperson, Frank Fernandez, had earlier issued a statement alleging that the four former members of the communist breakaway group, Revolutionary Proletarian Army, he identified as Vito Lutrago, Eduardo Linugon, Rexi Robles, and a certain Rako are the suspects in the murder of nine civilians on Oct. 20 in Hacienda Nene, Brgy. Bulanon, in Sagay, Negros Occidental.

Fernandez claimed that it was based on what he calls “exhaustive investigations” of the NPA Roselyn Pelle Command in northern Negros.

Chief Inspector Robert Mansueto, Sagay City police chief, said that Lutrago, Linugon, and Robles used to be NPA members, while “Rako” worked as an intelligence asset of the Philippine Army.

He stressed they have no evidence to link the four to the Sagay incident, as of this time, and he urged the NPA to produce any proof of the four’s alleged involvement in the killings, adding that he would welcome it.

Mansueto said they will include the four individuals tagged by NDF in their list to be invited for questioning, in connection with the Sagay incident, as their investigations are still underway, despite the filing of multiple murder charges against two identified suspects, Rene Manlangit and Rogelio Arquillo, who are organizers of the National Federation of Sugar Workers, and seven John Does.

As of this time, Mansueto said they have gathered statements from six more individuals, whom they invited for questioning.

The Sagay police investigation showed that two brothers of Lutrago had been killed by the NPA rebels in past years.

It added that the families of Manlangit and Arquillo have already left their homes, for security reasons.

The National Bureau of Investigation is also conducting a separate investigation of the Sagay 9 incident.

Col. Benedict Arevalo, newly-designated 303 rd Infantry Brigade commander, meanwhile, told the CPP-NPA and its supporters to “shut up and stop your lies”.

After Karapatan blamed the AFP and PNP, then the landlord as well as the lessee of the property occupied by the NFSW recruits, Arevalo said Fernandez now pointed to the RPA and SCAA as the perpetrators.

“Who’s next?” he asked.

In a statement, Fernandez had claimed that the creation of Task Force Hustisya by Gov. Alfredo Marañon Jr. who, together with his son, Sagay City Mayor Alfredo Marañon III, offered a P500,000 reward for the arrest of the massacre suspects, “stinks of deceit and ill motives”.

Gov. Marañon earlier blamed the NFSW for the massacre of the nine civilians, stressing that they were sent to occupy Hacienda Nene even if they had no Certificate of Land Ownership Awards, and the land has already been distributed to 25 beneficiaries.

“It was a scripted plan, the NFSW people know who carried out the ambush,” Marañon said, adding that, “I feel they were the ones who did that, they are the ones to blame.”

The allegation of Gov. Marañon was strongly debunked by NFSW chairperson Rolando Rillo.

Fernandez alleged that Marañon continues with his vain attempts to divert the public from the real issues of land monopoly, tyranny, and exploitation.

He alleged that there is “collusion of Duterte, Marañon, top officials of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police, and other government agencies to downplay the Sagay massacre and exploit the deaths of the farm workers to further their counterinsurgency plan of decimating the New People's Army by mid-2019”.

Fernandez also called the filing of murder charges against members of the NFSW as “absurd and does not hold water.”

http://www.visayandailystar.com/2018/November/05/topstory2.htm