BACOLOD CITY ,Philippines —Task Group Jimena was recently created by the Police Regional Office-6 to undertake a speedy investigation and solve the murder of Niel Jimena, an Iloilo-based radio commentator who was gunned down in E. B. Magalona town, Negros Occidental Monday.
The task group, headed by Sr. Supt. Allan Guisihan, provincial police director, is composed of personnel of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, the PNP Crime Laboratory, and Intelligence and Investigation Branches of the Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office (NOPPO).
Chief Insp. Ray Cuanico of the CIDG is the group's assistant head, with Chief Inspectors Rico Santotome Jr., Ehdel Periera and Argel Ancheta, Superintendents Lazaro Sumague and Arnel Arpon, SPO4 Leonardo Cobing, and PO2s Rexel Taganile and Ronilo Maru.
Guisihan said they will focus their investigations on three angles: Jimena's job as media practitioner, his being a former confidential informant of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and personal grudges.
Larry Trinidad, anchorman at RMN-Bacolod, said Jimena was an informant of PDEA but was terminated sometime in 2008. The PRO-6 has ordered NOPPO to exhaust all efforts to apprehend the suspects, he said.
Jimena became the 146th member of the Fourth Estate who was murdered since the restoration of democracy in 1986, and the ninth victim this year, said Juan Elmer Ubaldo of dyEZ Aksyon Radyo, president of the Iloilo Press Club.
The club said Jimena was known as a hard-hitting commentator in his block-time radio program, but "his style of commentaries is not enough reason to kill him and shall in no way justify the brutal act."