NPA vs Army

Please read....NPA's "Melito Glor Command" chieftain, et al charged over jail attack
by King Formaran

Lucena City - The provincial office of Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) here has filed string of charges against Tirso Alcantara alias Ka Bart, chief of the New People's Army's Melito Glor Command, which has the operational jurisdiction over the Calabarzon and Mimaropa regions (Regions 4-A and 4-B), along with several others in connection with the daring attack of Quezon Provincial Jail and the scape of seven political detainees last October 25.

Melito Glor Command is formerly headed by Communist Party of the Philippines spokesman Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal who has been missing in action for more than two years.

Chief Insp. Jethro Lim, provincial officer of Quezon CIDG disclosed that aside from Alcantara and several others, they also charged the seven escapees, namely; Gemma Carag, Cecilia Mondia, Noel Santos, Jerson Carabido, Fernando Tawagon, Arnold Valencia and Rogelio Monteverde, before the provincial and city prosecurors offices.

Lim said they filed charges ofkidnapping with slight illegal detention, direct assault upon person in authority, double frustrated murder, delivery of prisoners from jail, serious physical injuries, malicious mischief, and carnapping, among others against Alcantara's group.

Disguised as law enforment agents, the heavily armed suspects stormed the Quezon provincial jail at around 6:15 p.m. on Oct.25, disarmed its jail guards of their service pistols and sprang the seven political detainees while the other supects who stayed outside the jail disarmed two security guards of the provincial capitol of their shotgun and revolver.

All the suspects and the escapees hastily fled on board four vans on diffirent directions.

A unit of Lucena City police station immediately established checkpoint at the outskirt of the city and placed its mobile car as road block. Seconds later, a group of fleeing suspects aboard a Kia Pregio opened fired and hurled a grenade while approaching the road block hitting two policemen and two bystanders.

The policemen managed to retaliate but were over powered by the suspects who were armed with machine guns and, M-14, M-16 rifles and M-203 grenade launcher.

Pursuing lawmen personally led by Quezon police director Senior Supt. Fidel Posadas were able to recover the vans hastily abandoned in four separate places. One of them bore bullet holes.

Earlier that day, at around 11:30 a.m., a dispatcher of vans-for-hire at a terminal in Pagbilao town was contacted by a female caller requesting for the availability of four passenger vans for an exclusive use. The dispatcher and the female caller agreed to meet in front of a hospital at Bgy. Mangilag Sur in Candelaria town with the contracted four vans.

At around 2:00 p.m., the dispatcher together with the drivers of the vans were met by the woman in the agreed place.

Minutes later, they were approached by a group of armed men who took the vehicles by force. The suspects then held the dispatcher and the four drivers and were tighly guarded by some ten armed men.

They were released at around 11:00 p.m. and were told to get their vans in Lucena City.

Quezon Governor Rafael Nantes immediately formed a fact- finding committee that will do an immediate probe on the incident, shortly after he ordered the relief of sixteen duty jail guards including the provincial warden. The governor has appointed Provincial Guard 3 Virgillo Villena as the acting warden.

Posadas lamented that the incident happened despite their warning to jail officials to take extra care to prevent possible attack by the rebels, long before the incident took place on that fateful evening.