DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Unknown to Roy Erecre, a New People’s Army (NPA) leader in Central Visayas with a P5.4-million bounty, a joint police-military team was on his tracks while he, along with his supposed girlfriend, was island-hoping here for a vacation.
After that weeklong surveillance, elements of the Davao City police, Armed Forces’ Eastern Mindanao Command (Eastmincom), the Army, Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-Region 11 and the AFP Intelligence Group finally pounced on Erecre at Doña Salud Subdivision in Barangay Sasa here yesterday morning.
Eastmincom spokesman Capt. Alberto Caber said Erecre, also known as Toto or Pasyong, is the secretary of the Central Visayas Regional Committee and an alternate member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-NPA.
Erecre was arrested along with his girlfriend, a certain Judith Jaron-Niog. He was immediately brought to Cebu City where he is facing several charges.
Erecre was nabbed by virtue of several arrest warrants from different regional trial courts in Cebu and Bohol for atrocities against civilians and government forces in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including the 1999 ambush that killed two lieutenants.
Caber said Erecre has to explain to the CPP-NPA why he was going around different beaches and hotels in Davao with a married woman. – With Jaime Laude