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Bacolod City, PhilippinesWednesday, November 28, 2007
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Suspect in
broadcaster's slay falls
BY NESTOR BURGOS.JR.

ILOILO CITY – Police on Tuesday arrested one of two suspects in the 2001 murder of Aklan broadcaster Rolando Ureta.

Senior Supt. Benigno Durana Jr., Aklan provincial police director, said members of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and the Aklan Provincial Police Office arrested Amador Raz around 7:45 a.m.in front of the municipal hall of Numancia in Aklan.

Raz was arrested based on a warrant issued on Nov. 21 by Judge Marietta Homena-Valencia, presiding judge of the Kalibo Regional Trial Court Branch 1, for the murder of Rolando Ureta.

Raz was detained at the Numancia police station. The other suspect, Jessie Ticar, remains at large.

The lone witness, Gerson Sonio, has tagged Raz and Ticar as the ones who shot dead Ureta on January 2, 2001, along the national highway in Barangay Bagtu, Lezo town, Aklan.

The suspects had denied involvement in the killing and have questioned the credibility of the witness.

Ureta was driving a motorcycle on his way to his parents' house when two suspects on a motorcycle drove alongside and shot him. Ureta fell into a ditch and managed to reach a house near the national highway before he was finished off by the suspects.

The broadcaster was program director of radio station dyKR of the Radio Mindanao Network amd hosted the nightly program “Agong Nightwatch.” He was investigating the proliferation of illegal gambling and illegal drugs in the province when he was killed.

Ureta's widow Emely welcomed the arrest.

“This is an early Christmas gift for me and our son Kint,” she said in a telephone interview. “I hope that the police will arrest the other suspects also.”

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines also welcomed the arrest but said the resolution of cases of slain journalists are still moving too slow.

“It's about time. Six years of crying out for justice is too long for Rolando's family,” NUJP President Jose Torres Jr. said.

The Aklan Provincial Prosecutors Office had dismissed the complaint against the suspects but this was reversed by the Department of Justice in January this year.

The killing of another Aklan broadcaster, Herson "Boy" Hinolan, remains unsolved.

The alleged gunman, former Lezo town mayor Alfredo Arcenio, has eluded arrests despite a P100,000 cash reward offered for his arrest.

Ureta and Hinolan are among the 90 journalists murdered since 1986 and among the 53 killed since President Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001, according to a tally of the NUJP.*NPB

 

 

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