No breakthrough in Tentorio slay probe

MANILA, Philippines - The investigation into the Oct. 17 killing of Italian missionary Fausto Tentorio in North Cotabato has come to a standstill as potential witnesses, including his companions in the Arakan town parish, have not been cooperating with military investigators, an official of the Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed yesterday.

“I was told that the community has apprehension toward the local authorities there. They don’t want to talk to the military that’s why they’re happy that the DOJ will investigate this case,” DOJ Undersecretary Francisco Baraan III said in a press conference.

“So we don’t have a clear lead yet at this point,” he added.

Baraan chairs the DOJ special task force on extralegal killings.

The team, composed of investigators from the Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation, is set to fly to Cotabato next week after the long holiday break to personally talk to Fr. Tentorio’s companions at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish.

The DOJ official said they would pursue all possible angles, including the priest’s active involvement in anti-mining activities in the province. He said paramilitary units may have been involved in the murder.

“Once we talk to the companions of Fr. Tentorio in the parish, we hope to have a clearer picture,” Baraan stressed.

He also revealed that they already have a sketch of the last person who visited Fr. Tentorio before his death.

Fr. Tentorio, 59, of the Rome-based Pontifical Institute for Foreign Mission (PIME), was about to board his car parked outside the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish church at the town of Arakan when an unidentified man armed with a .9-mm pistol approached him and shot him twice in the head.

With the priest already sprawled on the ground, the suspect fired one more shot at him before escaping on a motorbike driven by another unidentified man toward Barangay Anapolon in Arakan near the boundary of Bukidnon and North Cotabato. Witnesses said the man and his companion were wearing helmets.

Tentorio, a known environmentalist, had strongly opposed mining operations in Arakan.

Aside from being an environmentalist, Tentorio had also been a vocal defender of the rights of indigenous people, an advocacy that had endeared him to many. He spoke the local dialect fluently.

He was recently named titular head of the municipality’s anti-crime Task Force Arakan, a multi-sectoral group helping the police maintain peace and order in the area.

Tentorio was the second Italian missionary killed in North Cotabato.

Militiamen, led by siblings Edilberto and Norberto Manero, gunned down Fr. Tulio Favali, also a PIME missionary, in Tulunan town in 1985.