The suspect, Rolando Navarette, was reportedly "positively identified" by Charles Gabriel, an acolyte of Fr. William Tadena, as one of the two motorcycle-riding gunmen who waylaid them in Barangay Guevarra, La Paz town.
Gabriel came face-to-face with Navarette at the police station here as the suspect, arrested by elements of the National Anti-Kidnapping Task Force, was to be brought to Pangasinan to face a string of murder and robbery cases there.
Tadena, Gabriel and one Carlos Barsolaso were ambushed shortly after the priest celebrated Mass in Barangay Guevarra.
The priest died while being rushed to the Central Luzon Doctors’ Hospital (CLDH). His two companions sustained minor gunshot wounds.
Tadena was the parish priest of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, more commonly known as the Aglipayan Church, in La Paz town.
He was a staunch human rights advocate and was also actively involved in the political campaigns of radical organizations, among them the left-leaning party-list groups Bayan Muna and Anakpawis.
Sources said Navarette has a live-in partner in Tarlac, a sister of a former municipal mayor.
The suspect reportedly has had links with retired and discharged policemen and soldiers in Central Luzon who are now engaged in criminal activities, such as guns-for-hire, kidnappings and highway robberies.
Earlier, SPO3 Milben Romero, of the La Paz police, filed murder and frustrated murder charges against a certain Ka Boyong, said to be a member of the New People’s Army, with the Victoria-La Paz Municipal Circuit Trial Court in Victoria in connection with Tadena’s ambush-slaying.
Emil Paragas, local spokesman of human rights group Karapatan, said the La Paz police move to blame the NPA for Tadena’s killing "could be an attempt to cover up the masterminds."
Meanwhile, the Central Luzon police said a chemical analysis of at least two copies of a statement of a shadowy anti-communist vigilante group calling itself the Kasama-Kayabe-Kadua (the Tagalog, Pampango and Ilocano words for "comrade," respectively), or KKK, showed that they were of the same handwriting.
A copy of the KKK statement condemning the activities of the communist movement, was found in the site where Tadena was slain.
Another copy was also found at the scene where activist Tarlac City councilor Abelardo Ladera was assassinated last March 3.
But besides the KKK, another shadowy anti-communist vigilante group, the Nagkakaisang mga Biktima ng Karahasan ng NPA (NBKN), owned up to the killings of Ladera and Tadena.
In a media statement, the NBKN accused the murdered priest and councilor of having ties with the NPA, the Communist Party of the Philippines and its political arm, the National Democratic Front.