Cops scouring Bataan for Palparan

BALANGA CITY, Philippines – Authorities have dispatched three tracking teams to three coastal municipalities in Bataan to validate reports that fugitive retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr. is hiding in a resort.

Senior Superintendent Arnold Gunnacao, Bataan police director, told The STAR there is a strong probability that the former Bantay party-list representative had visited his friends in Abucay, Bagac and Morong towns.

He, however, refused to identify Palparan’s “trusted friends” for security and operational reasons.

Gunnacao said he got two text messages from local folk the other day, informing him about the presence of Palparan, who was charged with serious illegal detention and kidnapping of University of the Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño in 2006.

Malolos, Bulacan Regional Trial Court Judge Teodora Gonzales issued an arrest warrant for Palparan last Dec. 20 after the retired general was off-loaded from a commercial flight bound for Singapore at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport in Pampanga.

Palparan supposedly wanted to spend the Christmas holidays with his relatives and to attend business meetings with friends when immigration officers confronted him.   

Palparan was commander of the Army’s 24th Infantry Battalion based in Barangay Camacho here before the EDSA Revolution in 1986. He recruited residents as “monitoring agents“ in his campaign to neutralize communist rebels in the province.

Palparan was reportedly often seen with his friends in coastal towns in northern Bataan during his stint as commanding general of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division based at Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija.

The 62-year-old retired general, according to Gunnacao, possibly traveled with two to three companions during his supposed secret trips to Bataan.

Gunnacao said the police chiefs in 12 Bataan towns have been alerted and mobile police units have been randomly checking prominent beach resorts and Palparan’s old friends in the province.