NPA owns killing of Swiss-Filipino businessman

DAVAO CITY, Philippines—The New People’s Army has admitted killing 48-year-old Swiss-Filipino businessman Patrick Wineger, saying it did so because of his involvement in the military’s anti-communist activities.

In a statement sent to the Inquirer on Thursday, the NPA also linked Wineger to the October 17, 2011 murder of Italian missionary priest Fausto Tentorio.

The Wineger family refused to issue any statement in connection with his death.

Wineger, whose family manages rubber plantations in Makilala, North Cotabato, including those owned by the family of the late Negros Occidental Representative Hortensia Starke, was doing some marketing chores in Kidapawan City when he was gunned down by two motorcycle-riding men last Wednesday.

Colonel Leopoldo Galon, spokesperson of the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command, said Wineger had been active in the military’s peace campaign in North Cotabato.

“He prioritized former rebels in his plantations,” Galon said.

Rigoberto Sanchez, spokesperson of the NPA’s Merardo Arce Command, said Wineger was executed by members of the Front Committee 53.

“Wineger had long been on the NPA’s standing order for his anti-communist activities in North Cotabato, Davao del Sur, and Bukidnon provinces. His active participation in anti-NPA activities involved the supervision of lumad military assets and passing of intelligence information to the fascist enemy that led to the death of two NPA Red fighters, and burning to death of a civilian in Saguing, Makilala town,” Sanchez said.

He said Wineger had also “played a big role in the intelligence operations and provided economic support to an anti-communist group linked with the killing of Fr. Tentorio.”

Sanchez said text messages on the mobile phone that the NPA had taken from Wineger’s after he was killed “revealed his role as handler of paramilitary baganis tribal warriors linked with Fr. Tentorio’s murder.”

“Wineger’s death is a first step towards achieving full revolutionary justice for the beloved Fr. Tentorio. The swift and timely punishment of one of the principals of Fr. Tentorio’s killing stands as a fitting and just retribution amid the false justice dispensed by the US-Aquino regime,” Sanchez said.

In a related development, the NPA said it was also behind a March 5 ambush in Makilala  in which four soldiers were killed.

Ricardo Fermisa, an NPA spokesperson, said the ambush was in retaliation for the killing of civilian Ramon Batoy, the alleged torture and incarceration of two other farmers by soldiers, and the forced evacuation of civilians in Kabalantian, a village in Arakan, North Cotabato, “three days after” Tentorio’s death.