Hired killers gather in Camanava for polls?

MANILA, Philippines - Hired killers from Mindoro and Quezon provinces have reportedly converged in Northern Manila to offer their services to candidates in the Oct. 25 barangay elections, STAR sources said yesterday.

Sources in Malabon City told The STAR that the hired killers are staying in safehouses to be on call for clients who want their political rivals killed.

“The contract price ranges from P50,000 to P100,000 per barangay chairman,” a source familiar with gun-for-hire operations said.

The source said the presence of killers for hire in Northern Manila, particularly in Malabon, cropped up after re-electionist Barangay Concepcion chairman Max Bernardo was killed as he was walking home from church Sunday morning. A masked gunman used a .45 caliber pistol to shoot him in the head. Police described it as a gangland execution.

The same group is believed to be responsible for the killing of a rice trader and his wife during a robbery in Barangay Flores.

Similar gangland murders were reported over the past several months in the Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas and Valenzuela area, according to police.

‘Contract killing now a thriving industry’

Former police officer Wenceslao Sombero earlier told reporters during a forum in Quezon City that gun-for-hire groups are now part of a “full-grown industry” earning millions of pesos.

He said gun-for-hire groups have a long list of targets and “we can expect more political and media killings to continue if the government will not initiate drastic action.”

Sombero said the contract killing industry has three levels – the clients, the brokers, and the hitmen.

He said clients include politicians and businessmen willing to pay to have their rivals or people who wronged them killed. Brokers are middlemen who scout for clients and have contacts among the hitmen, and arrange the payment for them.

Sombero said the hitmen are former communist guerillas, ex-convicts and soldiers and policemen dismissed from service.

He said the contract price could run up to millions of pesos, depending on the target – elusive, well-guarded targets have a higher price tag.

Between jobs, guns for hire sometimes turn to bank robbery, carjacking or kidnapping, Sombero said.