Ejercito ambushers on the run; video footage missing

CAMP OLIVAS, Pampanga -- The alleged leader of the band of communist rebels suspected of being behind the ambush of presidential son Joel "Jojo" Ejercito last week has remained at large, the Central Luzon police said yesterday.

This developed as a videotape purportedly containing footage of the ambush taken by a slain radio reporter is now missing and is believed to have been stolen.

Superintendent Roberto Calinisan, head of the Central Luzon police, said Amador Guevarra, the alleged leader of the Rebolusyunaryong Hukbo ng Bayan (RHB), continues to evade lawmen who have been hunting him.

Guevarra, also known as Ka Basil, was among those charged for the murder of radio reporter Vincent Rodriguez and the wounding of a woman in the ambush on Ejercito and Sasmuan town Mayor Catalina Bagasina last May 23.

Calinisan said his men and a number of Army soldiers raided Barangay San Juan Pambilog in San Luis town last Friday to capture Guevarra but the rebel leader reportedly escaped.

Two suspected RHB members were killed and two others were captured in the raid, he said.

Calinisan noted that there are only about 100 RHB "regulars" in Central Luzon. "It's likely that the intensified operations against them have crippled their group," he said.

The New People's Army (NPA), which is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has denied any involvement in the ambush. It clarified that the RHB was no longer a part of the rebel movement and is just a band of "NPA expellees" engaged in criminal activities such as extortion and looting.

The NPA also accused the RHB of being "guns for hire" and its leader Guevarra as having been a member of the security group of a well known gambling lord in Central Luzon.

Meanwhile, local officials in Sasmuan town are asking the police for the videotape which allegedly contained footage of the ambush.

The officials, who refused to be identified, said radio reporter Rodriguez had a video camera and was filming the activities of Ejercito and Bagasina when their group was ambushed.

Rodriguez was with President Estrada's eldest son in a convoy of six motorboats cruising along the Pampanga River when he was shot by heavily armed men.

Rodriguez died of gunshot wounds in the head. Bagasina has said that the reporter was just an "innocent victim" in the ambush which she blamed on her political opponents.

Bagasina only became the mayor of Sasmuan last week after a local court upheld her electoral protest.