NPAs kill police chief of Abra town

BAGUIO CITY — Communist guerrillas kidnapped and then executed the police chief of a remote town in Abra.

Police confirmed that SPO4 Ernesto Bernal, 55, chief of police of Lacub town in northern Abra, was shot dead by guerrillas on Sunday. He was the second police officer in the same family to be killed by the rebels.

In a statement, the Agustin Begnalen Command of the New People’s Army (NPA) said Bernal was taken from his home on Sunday, subjected to a so-called "people’s court" for crimes like rape and for killing rebels, then shot dead as punishment.

Police spokeswoman Emily Cayandag denied the rebel charges that Bernal had committed any crimes but said he was active in the fight against the communist rebels.

She denied the NPA accounts that Bernal had been given a "trial" before his murder, saying the police chief had merely been shot dead while walking on the highway on his way to a police conference.

Bernal’s older brother, Virgilio Bernal, a former police chief of Lacub town, was also shot dead in an NPA ambush in 1991, Cayandag added.

The NPA’s political leadership, the Communist Party of the Philippines, announced last month that it was suspending talks with the government because of its failure to persuade Western countries to remove the party from their lists of foreign terrorist organizations. — Artemio Dumlao, Myds Supnad and AFP