Key suspects in twin Abra attacks fall

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines – Two wanted men in Abra – one for the 2002 killing of Tineg town mayor Clarence Benwaren, and the other, for the 2010 failed slay try on former Bangued mayor Ryan Luna – are now in police custody.

After 12 years in hiding, Ruben Barcena Bobila, 34, the alleged assassin of Benwaren, was finally arrested on Wednesday in his hideout in Barangay Lenneng, Baay-Licuan town in Abra.

Senior Superintendent Virgilio Laya, Abra police director, said Bobila had been listed as the fourth most wanted person in the Cordillera region. 

The 35-year-old Benwaren was murdered right inside a church during a wedding ceremony in Calamba, Laguna in October 2002.

Police could not say who ordered Bobila to kill the Tineg town mayor and if he belonged to a private army.

Initially, authorities blamed the killing on the New People’s Army that supposedly had allied itself with an Abra politician. Up to this time, the NPA has kept mum on the crime. 

Benwaren’s family then insinuated that former Abra governor Vicente Valera could have had a hand in the killing.

Valera is in jail for allegedly masterminding the killing of Abra congressman Luis Bersamin in Quezon City in December 2006. He had denied having something to do with these slays.

Meanwhile, a certain Jonete Barbon Jacinto, 44, believed to have led the failed slay try on Luna during the 2010 election campaign, was arrested also on Wednesday.

Jacinto, however, was charged only with illegal possession of firearms for which he could post P80,000 bail for his temporary freedom.

Luna was waylaid in a village in Pennarubia town while he was campaigning for his mother, former Abra congresswoman Cecilia Seares-Luna.

The young Luna survived the ambush with facial and body injuries, and later became the mayor of Bangued, Abra’s capital town, for one term.

Luna though is now in hiding after an arrest warrant was issued against him before the May 2013 polls for the killing of a female Tineg mayoral bet in a polling precinct in Bangued.