3 suspected NPA rebels nabbed in North Cotabato

KIDAPAWAN CITY—-Authorities on Thursday said they had arrested three suspected New People’s Army (NPA) members, who might have been involved in the 2012 murder of a Swiss-Filipino trader and the January 6 killing of a former Presidential Security Group (PSG) in North Cotabato.

Lt. Col. Harold Argamosa, commander of the Army’s 39th Infantry Battalion, said soldiers and policemen made the arrests in Barangay Balite in Magpet, North Cotabato on Tuesday.

He said the suspects, Harold Adiaton and Ian Solis alias “Iyan,” were both active members of the NPA’s Special Partisan Unit (Sparu); while Dandan Mailan Andas, alias “Dodong,” was a recruiter under the Guerrilla Front 53 of the NPA’s Southern Mindanao Regional Committee.

“Dandan is a known recruiter of the communist movement and a member of a kangaroo court (an irregular unauthorized court) of the underground mass base of the NPA as revealed by former NPA surrenderees,” Argamosa said.

He said Adiaton and Solis had a hand in the January 6 killing of Technical Sergeant Ronel Galupo in Magpet town.

He said as operatives of the NPA’s Merardo Arce Command, the duo were also behind the March 2012 murder of Swiss-Filipino Patrick Weinneger in Kidapawan City.

The Merardo Arce Command had earlier owned up to Weinneger’s killing, saying he “was punished for his involvement in the killing of Italian missionary priest Fausto Tentorio in Arakan, North Cotabato” in October 2011.

Argamosa said Solis and Adiaton were also probably behind the killing of Bernabe “Bantito” Abanilla, the chief of North Cotabato’s civil security unit, who was shot dead in February 2016 in Arakan.

The duo’s other victims, he said, included another Army sergeant, a village councilor of Mahongcog, Magpet and a vendor.

The three suspected rebels were detained at the Magpet police lockup cell. Edwin O. Fernandez