Task force clears rebels in Tetangco-Yap murders

SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga, Philippines – The head of the police’s task force investigating the murders of a brother of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas governor and two others in Angeles City on June 2 clarified yesterday that suspected rebels who claimed to have been tortured by cops could not be linked to the killings.

“We do not condone the use of torture. Involvement of any rebel group in the Tetangco-Yap murders is possible, but at this point there is no evidence at all to back up that theory,” Senior Superintendent Wendy Rosario told The Star.

Rosario is head of the task force probing the murder of Rene Tetangco, brother of BSP Governor Amando Tetangco, businessman Florencio Yap and Yap’s aide Dennis Guinto, whose bodies were found in Yap’s van on a vacant lot along Friendship Avenue in Angeles City on the night of June 2. Probers said they were killed elsewhere while on their way to the King’s Poker and Sports Club in the city.

Rosario was reacting to sworn statement submitted to the Regional Trial Court Branch 43 here, by Lenin Canda Salas, 29, saying that cops who arrested him on Aug. 3 used torture to compel him to admit to the killing of Tetangco, as well as other victims in other unsolved murder cases in Pampanga.

Salas, who was arrested with four others, were charged with illegal possession of firearms and accused of being leaders of the rebel group Rebolusyonaryong Hukbo ng Bayan, the armed group of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the Philippines (MLPP), a breakaway group of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

“There is no evidence to link the RHB to the Tetangco case,” Rosario said, while admitting that his task force remains facing a blank wall on the case.

Rosario said the Angeles police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) has filed a case of obstruction of justice against one of Yap’s aides he identified only as Nonong.