Aquino rally gunman interrogated
Military investigators have interrogated a gunman seized in an election rally crowd waiting to hear the Philippine President, Corazon Aquino, but senior army officials said yesterday there was no immediate indication that the man was aiming to kill Mrs Aquino. The man, who has not been identified, was arrested on Sunday near a stage from which Mrs Aquino was to address a rally in Tacloban in the central Philippines. He was carrying a .45 revolver and a hand grenade, the military said. The man was seized by soldiers about 30m from the stage, 90 minutes before Mrs Aquino was due to speak. “We cannot immediately say that he was planning to kill Cory Aquino,” a military spokesman, Colonel Honesto Isleta, told reporters in Manila. Colonel Isleta, and the armed forces Chief-of-Staff, Fidel Ramos, said the man was still under interrogation at an army camp in Tacloban. They said there was no firm evidence about his motive. “We’re trying to find out what his connections ar«y>who he is, why he
was there, and why he was carrying those things (the weapons),” Mr Isleta said. Military officials said on Sunday that the man was a suspected communist assassin, a member of one of the “sparrow unit” death squads sent by the guerrillas into the cities as part of the country’s 18 year-old communist rebellion. But they did not say how he was linked with the rebel New People's Army. Mrs Aquino went ahead with her appearance in support of Government candidates in the General Election on May 11 for a new two-house Congress. The incident was the second in recent weeks linked to Mrs Aquino’s security. On March 18, a bomb badly k damaged a grandstand from which she was to review graduating cadets at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio. The bomb killed four people and injured 40, and was called by Mrs Aquino the “greatest threat to my jife” of her 13-month presidency. An army explosive expert is in custody over the incident but has not been - V
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Press, 7 April 1987, Page 10
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342Aquino rally gunman interrogated Press, 7 April 1987, Page 10
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