By ERWIN MASCARIÑAS
Correspondent
THE New People’s Army has denied the accusation of the Army that they were behind the beheading of a militiaman whose body was found in San Miguel town, Surigao del Sur.
In a statement, Ariel Montero, spokesperson of the NPA’s Regional Operational Command, said the military’s assertion about the NPA’s involvement in the killing of Mar Acebedo Bocales was “a big lie and a desperate move” by the Army’s 402nd Infantry Brigade and the 4th Infantry Division.
Bocales’s body was found in Sitio Haguimitan, Barangay Castillo, San Miguel, in Jan. 27. He was beheaded and one of his arms was hacked off.
“The NPA-North Eastern Mindanao Region has nothing to do with the said killing. Mar Bocales is a Cafgu member assigned to a detachment in Barangay Los Arcos, Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur who [has] not been on duty and was deployed as an asset of the Armed Forces of the Philippines,” said Montero.
He pointed to a paramilitary group operating in San Miguel and other mining areas as the suspect, adding that the brutal killing was related to small-scale mining interests.
Montero said the same group was behind the killing of three Lumad leaders in Han-ayan, Diatagon, Lianga, Surigao del Sur in 2015, and a peasant leader in Barangay Castillo, San Miguel in July 2017.
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