Ex-Estrada bodyguard nabbed for Baron slay

A former personal bodyguard of ousted President Joseph Estrada has been arrested for the murder of Ba-ron Cervantes, the self-proclaimed spokesman for the controversial Young Officers Union (YOU), police officials said yesterday.

Ex-Marine Sgt. Joseph Mostrales was apprehended Tuesday night by members of the National Anti-Kidnapping Task Force (NAKTAF) and Pangasinan police in a raid on a safehouse in Barangay Lauren in Umingan town.

Mostrales and an accomplice, a civilian named Jaime Centeno, were presented to media at Camp Crame yesterday by Philippine National Police chief Director General Leandro Mendoza and NAKTAF head Deputy Director General Hermogenes Ebdane.

Centeno was arrested in a raid in Antipolo the same night.

"(Mostrales) has been positively identified by a witness as the one who shot Cervantes," Mendoza told a press conference.

He said they are now collating evidence "to pin down the mastermind" in the Dec. 31, 2001 killing of Cervantes.

Ebdane said Mostrales had offered to testify against other parties involved in the murder.

He said both suspects had divulged information about other individuals involved in the assassination.

"There are six of them in the group. The mastermind will be known soon," Ebdane said.

Mostrales, a member of the shadowy military group Guardians, had previously served as close-in security for Estrada while assigned to the Presidential Security Group (PSG). He was dismissed earlier this year for being AWOL and has since been linked to three kidnap-for-ransom cases carried out in the same year, the PNP said.

Police, however, did not say whether the murder of Cervantes was in any way linked to Estrada, who is on trial for plunder charges.

Cervantes, a former police captain, was shot at close range near a convenience store along the Alabang-Zapote Road in Las Piñas on Dec. 31 last year.

The killing came amid rumors of destabilization attempts being hatched against President Arroyo. Cervantes’ warning of a coup by rightist and anti-government groups spurred speculation that an internal rift had broken out in the YOU, a shadowy military fraternity.

YOU had been involved in rightist military coup attempts against then President Corazon Aquino in the late ’80s but it has since declared that it is abandoning violence. - With AFP