Former NPA chief dies of heart attack – report

A former chief of the Communist Party of the Philippines and New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) in Mindanao succumbed to a heart attack Friday while visiting a project in Sarangani province. Online news site Mindanews reported on Sunday that Benjamin de Vera, 59, collapsed and was rushed to the town hospital in Glan but died before doctors there could treat him. At the time of his death, he was assistant regional director of the Department of Agriculture in Region XI. He was regional director of DAR in Region X during the Estrada administration. De Vera’s remains now lie in state at the Cosmopolitan Parlor in Davao City. He is survived by wife Beatriz and three daughters. A key member of the CPP’s central committee, de Vera left the CPP in the early 1990s after a feud with founding chairman Jose Maria Sison. He was believed to be among the key cadres of the CPP-NPA who planned and executed the failed MV/Andrea-Karagatan arms smuggling in the early 1970s. But the CPP-NPA later accused him of engineering a bitter split in the underground communist movement. De Vera was arrested in September 1982 along with former student leader Edgar Jopson during a raid in an underground safehouse in Davao City but escaped from Camp Leonor in 1985. Government troops captured him on March 29, 1989 in San Juan, but then President Corazon Aquino eventually ordered him released. National Democratic Front Chairman Luis Jalandoni accused de Vera for the Kampanyang Ahos (Garlic Campaign) where hundreds of NPA cadres were tortured and executed in 1985 and 1986. De Vera denied direct involvement in the bloody purge. - GMANews.TV