Hunt on for killers of Ifugao activist

La Trinidad, Benguet – Hunt is on for the killers of Ifugao activist and Bayan Muna partylist provincial coordinator William Bugatti, the Cordillera police said.

An Investigating Task Group was immediately formed and is being led by Ifugao police director Sr. Supt. Colinio, said Cordillera police director Chief Supt. Isagani Nerez.

“We will leave no stone unturned to get into the bottom of this,” Nerez, a veteran criminal investigator, said as he condemned the killing,  adding that  “it has no place in a peaceful and civil society”.

Bugatti, also a regional member of the Cordillera-based Cordillera Human Rights Alliance (CHRA) and  a leader of the Ifugao Peasant Movement, was gunned down 7 p.m. Tuesday night in Kiangan town.

Bugatti, was on his way home to his family at Bolog, Kiangan, when gunmen fired at  him, piercing his heart.

Audrey Beltran, CHRA secretary general who said that Bugatti was shot from the behind, has been receiving death threats.

The slain activist’s security threats heightened when a supposedly 5th Infantry Division and 86th Infantry Battalion “Target List in Tinoc” was obtained in October 2012, Beltran added.  Bugatti was listed as number 21 in the list in a roster of 28 people tagged as brains, members and supporters of the New People’s Army, she added.

Bugatti had been accused of being a member of the NPA, prompting “notable incidents of surveillance and harassment against him that derailed him from doing his work.”  

Before the murder Bugatti reportedly attended the hearing of the case of political prisoners Rene Boy Abiva and Virgilio Corpuz in Lagawe, Ifugao.  He went to the office of Ifugao Peasant Movement and was last seen alive by his colleagues at around 5 p.m. before he went home.

Cordillera police director Nerez, also a lawyer, called on witnesses to cooperate with the investigators for the early resolution of the crime “so that perpetrators would face the bar of justice.”