NPA commander tagged in Cagayan mayor's slay

From the Philippine Star posted to ABS-CBN (Apr 24): NPA commander tagged in Cagayan mayor's slay

A New People's Army (NPA) commander has been tagged as one of the gunmen of Mayor Carlito Pentecostes Jr. of Gonzaga, Cagayan, bolstering police suspicion that communist rebels were behind the killing.

NPA leader David Soriano, alias Ka Colly, was identified through a footage of the closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera installed at the Gonzaga town hall grounds where Pentecostes was gunned down last Monday, according to the regional police.

Chief Superintendent Miguel Laurel, Cagayan Valley police director, said Soriano, second in command of the NPA’s Northern Front Committee, was caught by the CCTV camera as one of the armed men in camouflage who gunned down the mayor.

Earlier reports said Pentecostes, 60, was shot by two of eight Armalite-wielding men who went near him while he was presiding over last Monday’s flag-raising ceremony.

Pentecostes, according to the reports, even greeted the armed men as they emerged from a van in front of the municipal hall, thinking they were military personnel making a courtesy call on him.

Laurel told The STAR that the hard drive of the CCTV camera was brought to Manila for decoding.

Soriano’s NPA unit reportedly operates in the Cagayan towns of Baggao, Gattaran, Amulung, Alcala, Sto. Niño, Rizal, Lasam, Allacapan, Gonzaga, Sta. Teresita, Aparri, Claveria, Ballesteros, Abulug, Pamplona, and Sanchez Mira, as well as in Calanasan, Flora, Pudtol and Sta. Marcela towns in Apayao province.

Soriano’s eight-man group was among at least 30 armed men who stormed the municipal hall and its vicinity during the assault.

A joint Army-police team is now pursuing the armed men in the Sierra Madre mountain ranges.

The armed men’s four getaway vehicles, included a police vehicle, were recovered in the remote Gonzaga village of Barangay Iska a few hours after the raid. Reports said the vehicles were totally burned.

Despite the police claim that NPA guerrillas were behind Pentecostes’ killing, the mayor’s family insisted that politics had something to do with it.

“This is about politics. The armed men are mercenaries of politicians. We don’t believe that it was the NPA who killed our brother. The way we see it his killing was related to politics,” said Pentecostes’ elder brother Edward.

He also belied reports that his brother’s killing had something to do with his support for the provincial government-sanctioned black sand mining in Gonzaga town.

“Those behind this condemnable act are just riding on the issue of mining. Besides, mining activities in Gonzaga have been stopped. If it’s about mining, they should have him killed during his first term,” he said.

Despite his being pro-mining, Pentecostes won overwhelmingly in his second mayoral bid in last year’s midterm elections against Esperlita Garcia, a known anti-mining activist.

Garcia, a distant relative of the slain mayor, is the president of the Gonzaga Alliance for Environmental Protection and Preservation.

Lt. Gen. Gregorio Catapang, chief of the Armed Forces’ Northern Luzon Command, also expressed doubts that the NPA was behind the killing. He was in Gonzaga the other day to oversee the pursuit operation against the armed group.

Catapang said last Monday’s attack was not the usual approach of communist rebels.

He said he was also surprised that a big number of armed men staged the assault, although Gonzaga, besides being generally peaceful, has already been classified as insurgency-free.

Meanwhile, Gonzaga Vice Mayor Rene Salvanera, Pentecostes’ political party mate, officially assumed the mayoral post the other day. He took his oath of office before Cagayan Regional Trial Court Judge Neljoe Cortes.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/regions/04/23/14/npa-commander-tagged-cagayan-mayors-slay