KIDAPAWAN CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Mar. 8, 2012) – Communist rebels on Thursday have owned up to the killing of a Swiss-Filipino trader whom they accused in the murder of an Italian missionary in the southern Philippines.
Rigoberto Sanchez, a spokesman for the Merardo Arce Command of the New People’s Army, said rebels killed Patrick Winneger, 48, in a daring attack Wednesday at a market place in Kidapawan City.
He said Winneger was a staunch anti-communist advocate who passed on intelligence about the NPA to the military’s 6th Infantry Division.
Sanchez implicated Winneger to the murder of Fr. Fausto Tentorio in North Cotabato province. “He coddled and financed fanatical and anti-NPA Bagani groups, and targeted Fr. Fausto ‘Pops’ Tentorio. Text Messages in Winneger’s mobile phone confiscated by the Herminio Alfonso Command operatives revealed his role as handler of paramilitary Baganis linked with Fr. Tentorio’s murder,” Sanchez said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
“Winneger clearly deserved the NPA’s punishment. The NPA’s partisan operation against Winneger showed that the fascist enemy cannot escape the long arm of revolutionary justice. In fact, Winneger’s death is a first step towards achieving full revolutionary justice for the beloved Fr. Tentorio. The swift and timely punishment of one of the principals of Fr. Tentorio’s killing stands as a fitting and just retribution amid the false justice dispensed by the US-Aquino regime,” he added.
Sanchez allegations were denied by the military and it strongly condemned the killing of Winneger. “Winneger was a victim of extortion by the NPA. Winneger was murdered because of his refusal to pay so-called ‘revolutionary taxes’ to the NPA,” Army Colonel Prudencio Asto, a spokesman for the 6th Infantry Division, said in a separate interview.
He said Major General Rey Ardo, the local division commander, ordered the filing of criminal charges against the NPA for the killing of Winneger.
In December, authorities also said it captured the alleged killer of Tentorio – Jimmy Ato – following a firefight with agents of the National Bureau of Investigation in North Cotabato’s Arakan town. His brother Robert, who was his accomplice, managed to escape.
Tentorio, a staunch anti-mining and human rights advocate, was shot dead on October 17 last year and militant and leftist groups blamed the military for the murder, an accusation denied by security officials. He was third Italian missionary murdered in Mindanao the past two decades.
Sanchez said Winneger had long been on the NPA’s hit list due to his anti-communist activities in North Cotabato, Davao del Sur, and Bukidnon provinces.
“His active participation in anti-NPA activities involved the supervision of Lumad military assets and passing of intelligence information to the fascist enemy that led to the death of two NPA Red fighters, and burning to death of a civilian in Saguing in Makilala town,” he said.
A military asset is a slang which refers to civilian informants or spies working for the army.
The rebels are fighting for the past decades for the establishment of a Maoist state in the country. Government peace talks with the rebel group had failed after Manila rejected demands for the unconditional release of all political prisoners in the country. (Mindanao Examiner)
20