DAVAO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / May 3, 2012) – Government troops have recovered Thursday afternoon three skeletal remains of villagers abducted and killed three years ago in the southern Philippines by communist rebels on suspicion they were military informants, officials said.
Officials said the human remains belonged to brothers Edwin and Elmer Palmera, who were seized by the New People’s Army in Davao Oriental’s Lupon town. The rebels also abducted Pamboy Obengke in the same town and killed him and buried in the same grave in a remote village in Lupon.
“An NPA rebel who surrendered to the military has led soldiers to the grave site in the village of San Isidro,” said Major Maria Christina Rosa Manuel, of the 10th Infantry Division.
She said Palmeras’ elder brother, Pastor Edward Palmera, of the United Pentecostal Church, and other village officials have witnessed the recovery of the skeletal remains.
“The execution was confirmed by a former rebel who surrendered recently to the 28th Infantry Battalion and he pointed the location of the shallow grave,” Manuel said.
The Palmera brothers were just selling cigarette lighters in the town when rebels abducted them, while Obengke was a farmer and all three men were accused by the NPA as working for the military, an allegation denied by army.
“That’s not true. Those were innocent civilians murdered by the NPA,” Manuel said.
There was no immediate statement from the rebel group about the murders of the three men. (Mindanao Examiner)
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