DUTCH VOW TO HELP BRING BACK RP COMMUNIST LEADER. Foreign Secretary Blas Ople said the Netherlands would support efforts of the Macapagal administration to bring Communist Party of the Philippines chair Jose Maria Sison back to Manila to face murder charges.
Ople said Dutch Secretary of State for European Affairs Atzo Nicolai issued the commitment as the two met at the sidelines of the 14th Asean-European Union Ministerial Meeting in Brussels. "Mr. Nicolai informed me that even the Dutch public was losing interest in Mr. Sison's antics and would be supportive of actions that would lead to bringing Mr. Sison to the bar of justice," Ople said.
The Philippine government is holding Sison responsible for, among others, the recent killing of former New People's Army chief Romulo Kintanar and former Cagayan congressman Rodolfo Aguinaldo in 2001. Manila and Amsterdam have yet to sign an extradition treaty. Without such a pact, the Philippines could not compel the Netherlands to surrender Sison to Filipino authorities.
Justice Undersecretary Merceditas Gutierrez said Thursday that the Dutch government could be asked that Sison be surrendered, but compliance was not compulsory. Amsterdam could accommodate the request based on "comity" or respect for the requesting state. Malacanang said it was counting on the Netherlands to "deliver" Sison, currently in exile at Utrecht.
Presidential spokesperson Ignacio Bunye said that the Dutch government could follow the example set by Malaysia. He called attention to Kuala Lumpur's handing over then fugitive Moro National Liberation Front chair Nur Misuari to Manila authorities two years ago.
Ople said the Dutch government deeply understood and fully appreciated the "fundamental value of justice and the need to address the sufferings of the victims of Mr. Sison." He also announced that the European Union had renewed its commitment to retain the New People's Army and Sison on its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Source: Philippines Daily Inquirer, 31 January 2003
GET KINTANAR’S KILLERS, PNP ORDERED ANEW. President Arroyo ordered the Philippine National Police (PNP) yesterday to get the killers of former New People’s Army (NPA) chieftain Romulo Kintanar.
Speaking at the PNP’s 12th anniversary celebration at Camp Crame in Quezon City, Mrs. Arroyo said high-profile crimes like Kintanar’s murder have "affected" peace and order in the country. Mrs. Arroyo said the police must focus on high-profile crimes as these "tend to disturb the psychological perimeters of the community" nationwide.
PNP chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. said arrests will be made "within the next few days," but he refused to give any names. Chief Superintendent Robert Delfin, PNP intelligence director, said his men have tagged Tirso Alcantara alias Ka Bert as "a major operator" in Kintanar’s murder, along with other "high-profile" members of the NPA’s National Partisan Command–Leo Velasco, Philip Limjuco and Bartolome Melchor.
Delfin said Bartolome may be named as an accused in Kintanar’s murder after police investigators have completed gathering evidence and taking the statements of witnesses. Delfin said Alcantara, who heads the Southern Tagalog Regional Party Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), has under his command about 1,500 to 2,000 rebels, out of the total 8,000 estimated number of rebels nationwide.
Source: Philippine Star, 31 January 2003
COPS CLOSING IN ON KINTANARS KILLERS. Police are closing in on members of the New People's Army unit that assassinated former NPA chieftain Romulo Kintanar, an official said yesterday.
Chief Superintendent Robert Delfin, director of the Philippine National Police's intelligence division, identified the suspects as Tirso Alcantara, Leo Velasco, Philip Limjuco and Bartolome Melchor. All four are high-profile members of the NPA's so-called National Partisan Committee, Delfin said. Delfin said Alcantara is next in line to Velasco in the hierarchy of the National Partisan Command, said to be the special operations unit of the NPA tasked with carrying out liquidation orders from Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Delfin said. "Limjuco and Melchor were the ones on the ground."
Meanwhile, Chief Superintendent Romeo Maganto, ordered by President Arroyo to lead the investigation, said two men who once worked closely with Kintanar may have set him up.
Yesterday, Kintanar's widow, Joy, led a memorial service at the Japanese restaurant where her husband was gunned down. Accompanied by priest and activist Fr. Robert Reyes, Joy tearfully read a passage from the Bible and lit candles.
Source: Philippine Star, 29 January 2003
NPA ADMITS KINTANAR SLAY. Breaking his silence, communist guerrilla spokesman Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal admitted yesterday that a "special team" of the New People's Army carried out the assassination of former NPA chieftain Romulo Kintanar last week.
In a statement carried on the Internet yesterday, Rosal said Kintanar was killed because of "numerous accountabilities to the revolutionary movement and the people." "It was absolutely correct to put an end to Kintanar's rotten, criminal, counter-revolutionary and bloody record," he said. Rosal said Kintanar was sentenced in 1993 by a "people's court," which found him guilty of masterminding and propagating "gangster operations," stealing P30 million from the funds of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and conniving with the police and military in counter- insurgency operations. He said Kintanar had a standing "warrant" for his arrest but the NPA failed several times to take him before their court to face the charges.
Rosal accused Kintanar of kidnapping Japanese businessman Noboyuki Wakaoji in 1986, which earned the former NPA chieftain and his cohorts a hefty sum of $10 million. Another case was the abduction of Bombo-Radyo Philippines president Roger Florete in 1989 that earned Kintanar and his group P15 million, Rosal said. Kintanar connived with his fellow NPA renegade Arturo Tabara in the kidnapping of Florete, Rosal added. He said Kintanar and his gang masterminded several bank robberies. In one operation in 1991, an NPA rebel was killed by responding policemen.
Rosal also said Kintanar was involved in gun-for-hire activities, including the slaying of actress Nida Blanca in November 2001. He said Philip Medel, one of the controversial suspects charged in the Blanca slaying, was a hired killer under the pay of Kintanar and his uncle, retired general Galileo Kintanar, former chief of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP).
Foremost of his crimes, Rosal stressed, was the failed assassination attempt on CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison in May 2000. Kintanar allegedly laid out the plans and headed the group that was to carry out the assignment.
Rosal insisted the killing of Kintanar was for "criminal reasons." "(It) is not for his ideological, political and organizational differences with the CPP leadership, not his leaving the party and the revolutionary movement.
Sison, for his part, maintained he was not directly involved in the killing of Kintanar although he did not discount the possibility that Kintanar was slain by his former comrades in the NPA for supposedly "making himself (Kintanar) liable for punishment." Kintanar was among four former communist leaders allegedly sentenced to death by an NPA "people's court" after they broke away from the CPP faction headed by Sison.
Source: Philippine Star, 27 January 2003
50 KINTANAR FOLLOWERS VOW TO AVENGE HIS DEATH. At least 50 followers of slain former New People's Army (NPA) leader Romulo Kintanar are ready to avenge his murder, sources in the intelligence community said yesterday.
The First Quarter Storm Foundation led by party-list Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales, on the other hand, urged leftist groups yesterday to avoid fratricidal violence while contributing to the solution of the murder. Military and police intelligence agents are monitoring not just the movements of NPA guerrillas but also those of Kintanar's followers, who vowed to exact revenge on his assailants. The pronouncement made by Kintanar's widow, Gloria "Joy" Jopson, shortly after the murder that her husband's killers "will pay" is not being taken lightly by authorities.
In reaction to CPP-NPA spokesman Gregorio "Ka Roger" Roger Meanwhile, military intelligence chief Col. Victor Corpus said Rosal acts only upon the orders of Sison, who is in self-exile in the Netherlands. Corpus shrugged off reports that he was next on the NPA target list.
The First Quarter Storm (FQS) Foundation, chaired by Loretta Ann Rosales, was shocked to learn that the CPP has claimed responsibility for the killing through a press statement issued yesterday through its website. "We enjoin all those who believe in the rule of law and respect for human rights to condemn this dastardly act," Rosales said in a statement. The military and police should be "very thorough, respect due process and refrain from making sloppy conclusions without sufficient and substantive evidence, lest the investigative process result in a witch hunt and the gross abuse of human rights," Rosales said.
She appealed to other armed leftist groups to approach the situation with "largeness of mind" and to exercise restraint and prudence to avoid fratricidal violence while contributing to a just solution to Kintanar's murder.
Source: Philippine Star, 27 January 2003
KINTANAR WIDOW TO REDS: "DON'T PLAY GOD". The widow of former New People's Army (NPA) commander Romulo Kintanar has four words to say to Jose Maria Sison and other communist leaders: "Please, don't play God."
Ma. Gloria "Joy" Asuncion-Kintanar issued the statement after the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) broke its three-day silence on Kintanar's killing and finally confirmed what the military and police suspected all along. She said the charges against her slain husband were "all lies."
Presidential Spokesperson Ignacio Bunye said Rosal's statement only confirmed that the CPP, together with its armed wing, "is a terrorist and criminal organization of the worst kind." He said the campaign would target not only armed communist rebels but also their "front organizations" and "militant cells" operating in Metro Manila.
In his statement, Rosal belied government reports that Malacanang chief of staff Rigoberto Tiglao was on the NPA hit list. Tiglao, a communist cadre in his youth, has become critical of the CPP-NPA cause when he recently joined the Macapagal administration.
Chief Supt. Romeo Maganto, head of a task force directed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to go after Kintanar's killers, urged Rosal Sunday to turn over the assassins to authorities.
Source: Philippines Daily Inquirer, 27 January 2003
EX-NPA CHIEFTAIN SLAIN. Romulo Kintanar, former head of the New People's Army (NPA), was felled by assassins' bullets inside a Japanese restaurant at the Quezon City Memorial Circle yesterday afternoon.
Two unidentified gunmen fired at Kintanar, hitting him eight times in different parts of the body, killing him instantaneously. Two other men were wounded in the attack. The fatal shots penetrated Kintanar's lungs and heart, said Dr. Vladimir Villasenor, head of the Philippine National Police (PNP)'s medico-legal division. Witnesses said Kintanar and his three companions had just finished eating lunch at the Kamameshi House restaurant at the Quezon City Circle when the two gunmen, who posed as customers, approached their table at about 1:30 p.m., casually pulled out their firearms and opened fire.
The two other victims in the shooting were identified as Edward Ruiz and Ricky Beltran, who sustained gunshot wounds and are currently confined at the Philippine Heart Center. Ruiz and Beltran, police said, were not Kintanar's companions and were hit by stray bullets. A police source said Kintanar could have recognized his killers and tried to run away, which caused the injuries sustained by Ruiz and Beltran. When he collapsed on the floor after sustaining bullet wounds, one of the suspects shot him again to make sure he was dead.
None of Kintanar's three companions were hurt. They scampered in different directions during the incident. The victim's widow, Joy, refused to be interviewed by reporters. She was not with him at the time. The suspects were described as men in their late thirties. One of the gunmen was said to be of medium build and wearing a white shirt. One suspect was armed with a caliber .45 automatic while the other had a 9-mm. pistol.
He was killed a few hours after he went to Camp Crame's Firearms and Explosives Division to follow up papers for his firearm, and two days after he and fellow former communist leader Arturo Tabara met with PNP chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig. Kintanar and Tabara are among the four former communist leaders allegedly sentenced to death by an NPA "people's court" after they broke away from the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
Kintanar, 52, was said to be the head of security at the Bureau of Immigration and a consultant at the National Electrification Administration. At the time of his death, Kintanar was also the consultant in peace talks between the RPA-Alex Boncayao Brigade (ABB) and the government.
An investigator who asked for anonymity said NPA rebels who despised Kintanar for leaving the group "might have had a hand in the killing." Central Police District (CPD) investigators said they are still looking at other possible suspects and motives.
CPD director Senior Superintendent Napoleon Castro said Kintanar has been "under threat" prior to his assassination. According to Castro, Kintanar informed an intelligence officer based at Camp Crame about the threat. Investigators are looking into the high probability that Kintanar's former comrades in the NPA are behind the murder. Castro said the killing bore the signature of the NPA. Castro added that the killing was very well-planned because the gunmen knew Kintanars favorite hangout. Sources in the military and police intelligence community said Kintanar has been the target of a liquidation mission of the National Partisan Command of the CPP. "As early as the middle of last year, he was warned of the assassination plot against him," sources said, referring to the CPP-NPA plot to launch high-profile assassinations against ranking government officials and top NPA leaders now working with the government.
Sources added that Kintanar has been accused by CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison of hatching an assassination plot against him in Brussels, Belgium. Malacanang condemned Kintanar's assassination and ordered the PNP to immediately get to the bottom of the killing.
Source: Philippine Star, 24 January 2003