2 Balweg slay suspects nabbed

The military arrested last week two men, including a former radio reporter, suspected of having a hand in the killing of former priest-turned-rebel leader Conrado Balweg in Abra last Dec. 31.

Lt. Gen. Jose Calimlim, vice chief of the Armed Forces, said elements of the military's intelligence service have arrested a certain Romeo Cacam Sanchez alias Ka Marvin, a former reporter, and one Nomer Calut Kuan alias Ka Jules or Nomer.

He said the two men were both staff members of the peasant secretariat of the Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front (CPP-NDF) and leaders of the New People's Army (NPA) in Ilocos and Cordillera provinces.

The two were arrested last May 12 in Binangonan, Rizal.

Calimlim also revealed that the two were subordinates of Lorna Rivera Baba alias Kumander Liza, a top guerrilla leader in Northern Luzon who was arrested last March in Abra. She had been tagged as among the masterminds in the Balweg slay.

"These two were constant companions of Baba when Balweg's liquidation was being planned," Calimlim said. "Prior to the killing, they were monitored to be somewhere in Bangued, Abra."

Balweg led the Cordillera People's Liberation Army, a guerrilla group in the Mountain Province, after abandoning the priesthood during the regime of deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

He later surrendered to the government after Marcos was toppled in 1986 and was the head of a local cooperative when he was gunned down.

His brother was initially suspected in the killing.

Calimlim said that during Baba's preliminary trial last May 6 in Abra, two witnesses identified her as the one who planned and led Balweg's murder.

He noted that the name of the two new suspects surfaced after other witnesses named them as Baba's associates.

One of the suspects, Sanchez, allegedly joined the communist movement only in 1995 after quitting his job as a reporter in a local radio station. -- With Mike Frialde