BANGUED, Abra -- 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 BarcenaBobila, 34, the alleged assassin of Benwaren, was arrested
Wednesday in his hideout in Barangay Lenneng, Baay-Licuan town in Abra.
Senior Supt.
VirgilioLaya, 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
JoneteBarbon 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.
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