Fil-Swedish aggie trader shot dead in Kidapawan

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao, Philippines – Suspected New People’s Army (NPA) rebels gunned down a Filipino-Swedish agricultural entrepreneur in Kidapawan City yesterday morning, authorities said.

The victim, Patrick Weneger, died on the spot from bullet wounds in the head.

Senior Inspector Sunny Leoncito, intelligence chief of the Kidapawan City police, said Weneger was at the public market along with a companion when two motorcycle-riding men pulled over near him and shot him with a .45-caliber pistol.

Weneger’s family owns a large rubber plantation at the hinterland border of Kidapawan City and Makilala, North Cotabato which the patriarch, Kurt Weneger, a full-blooded Swedish, established in the late 1970s.

Police and military intelligence sources said they received initial feedback from informants that Weneger’s killers belong to a special operations group of the NPA.

Weneger had reportedly ignored NPA demands for him to shell out “protection money” on a regular basis.

NPA rebels have attacked project sites of construction firms in Makilala and Kidapawan City in recent weeks, setting costly road-building equipment on fire apparently to force owners to give in to their extortion demands. – With Edith Regalado, Alexis Romero