NBI wants suspect as star witness

ANGELES CITY — The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has recommended that the arrested suspect in the May 10 killing of Aurora publisher-editor Philip Agustin be made a star witness against his two alleged accomplices who are still at large.

Jun Roque, officer-in-charge of the NBI office in Cabanatuan City, told The STAR yesterday that his office has forwarded its recommendation to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to consider suspect Reynaldo Morete as a star witness against his cousin Noli "Boyet" Morete and Emmanuel Alday in time for the preliminary investigation on June 20.

Reynaldo was arrested in Cabanatuan City a week after Philip Agustin, publisher-editor of the Starline Times Recorder, was shot dead inside his house in Dingalan, Aurora.

He admitted to the NBI that he acted as a lookout while Noli and Alday pulled off the killing.

Senior Superintendent Perfecto Palad, head of Task Force Agustin, said in a phone interview that his men have already stopped their search for Noli and Alday who were last reported to have fled to the forests in the Tarlac-Nueva Ecija boundary.

"But we will not stop gathering information from every possible source on (their) whereabouts. We have so much other work to do," Palad said.

Roque said Reynaldo could qualify as a star witness if he is found to be the least culpable among the three suspects.

For Palad, however, the Agustin murder case is already "solved."

"The suspects have already been identified and murder cases have been filed against them," he said.