NPAs disown Marcos bust bombers

BANGUED, Abra — Communist guerrillas disowned the two alleged Marcos bust bombers arrested by the military and police last week, saying that the two hardly pass the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army’s (CPP-NPA) criteria for reruitment.

Diego Wadagan, self-proclaimed spokesperson of the Agustin Begnalen Command, belied that Evelyn Bedana and Josephine Perez are in their roster.

Bedana, alias Ka Rhoda (formerly reported by the military as Araceli Arciaga), is being suspected by the military as the secretary of Ilocos Cordillera Regional Party Committee (ICRC) while Perez, alias Loren, is suspected as the political officer of Komiteng Larangan Gerilya Sinag of the CPP-NPA.

The two, believed responsible for the December 2002 bombing of the Marcos bust in Benguet, were arrested on June 21 at Barangay Bakakeng Central, Baguio City.

Wadagan branded the Military Intelligence Group responsible for linking Bedana and Perez to the CPP-NPA as "amateurish" in doing their intelligence work and victimized Bedana and Perez, whom he claimed were "innocent and hapless civilians."

Meanwhile, Martin Montana, spokesman of the NPA’s Chadli Molintas Command, said the two were actually members of non-government organizations.

After the explosion that ripped off the monument of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, it was Montana who issued a statement that the NPA’s Chadli Molintas Command carried out the bombings.

Bedana and Perez, through human rights lawyer Joselito Benedito, have requested Judge Charito Gonzales of the Regional Trial Court Branch 1 for a reinvestigation of the multiple frustrated murder raps filed against them claiming that the evidences allegedly seized from them had no connection with the case.

Police confiscated one .22 caliber and one .38 caliber revolvers, two pounds of C4, 12 pieces of non-electric blasting caps, one blasting device, one tester, two timing devices, two meters of M-700 time fuse, five meters of commercial detonating cord and voluminous subversive documents.

Wadagan said that these items could not have been possibly carried by the two as they were walking when arrested.

Beverly Longid, executive director of DINTEG, a volunteer paralegal and human rights institution based here claimed that Bedana is a social worker.

She said Bedana is a staff of the tobacco farmers advocacy group STOP-Exploitation based in La Union province. Perez on the other hand is the regional coordinator of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines-Ilocos region chapter. – With Benjie Villa