Bayan Muna leader shot dead in Baguio

BAGUIO CITY — A lone assassin shot dead the Ilocos regional coordinator of party-list group Bayan Muna near the city’s public market last Wednesday afternoon.

Senior Superintendent Isagani Nerez, city police chief, said the victim, Romeo Sanchez, also a broadcaster of radio station dzNL in San Fernando City, La Union, had just arrived here and was with two companions shopping for ukay-ukay (second-hand) clothes on 3rd Kayang street when the assassin shot him once in the nape with a caliber .380 semi-automatic and fled.

Nerez said the killing was "a precise operation" that was apparently well-planned, with the assassin possibly trailing him from Agoo, La Union where he and his companions had come from that afternoon.

The companions of Sanchez, also the Ilocos secretary-general of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, have given a description of the gunman to the police.

Manuel Loste, Bayan Muna national vice chairman, branded the slaying as a "political killing" although he did not specify who he suspected was behind it.

Security officials have often hinted that Bayan Muna has links to communist insurgents.

Sanchez, a former human rights worker, was indicted and held by the military in 2000 along with 12 others for suspicion of involvement in the Dec. 30, 1999 killing by communist rebels of Conrado Balweg, a former rebel priest who later turned against the communist rebels.

However, Sanchez and the others were later freed by a court which ruled there was not enough evidence against them.

Loste said Sanchez was the second Bayan Muna leader killed this year. Last March 3, Tarlac City councilor Abelardo Ladera, an activist affiliated with the party-list group and other militant organizations, was gunned down.

Tarlac officials have offered a P1-million reward for information leading to the arrest of those behind Ladera’s murder. Police also described the gunman as a "professional hit man." — With AFP and Benjie Villa