Suspect to killing of retired police general arrested in Cotabato City

February 29, 2024 | 6:42pm

COTABATO CITY — The police located on Wednesday one of the four suspects in the brutal killing of a retired police general in Cotabato City on March 19, 2022, that time serving as civil security chief of this city’s local government unit.

Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, announced on Thursday morning that Orlan Lindungan Ayunan voluntarily yielded to personnel of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, led by its regional chief, Lt. Ariel Huesca, who raided at past 6 p.m. Wednesday his hideout in Barangay Bagua 1, Cotabato City and served him a warrant for his arrest.

The 31-year-old Ayunan was tagged as one of the four men who killed with pistols the retired Police Gen. Rolen Balquin in an attack at a stretch of the busy Sinsuat Avenue in Cotabato City.

 Balquin’s driver and security escort, Police Chief Master Sgt. Ariel Gutang, was wounded in the incident.

The warrant for Ayunan’s arrest was issued by the Regional Trial Court Branch 13 in the capitol of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Balquin’s last position in the Philippine National Police was director of the Cotabato City Police Office, before he died in the atrocity that investigators and witnesses blamed on Ayunan and his three accomplices, Misuari Mando, Salem Edu and Roberto Abdullah.

The three other suspects, all at large, are subject of a manhunt by combined personnel of the CIDG-BAR and intelligence agents from the city police and PRO-BAR. 

Huesca and Nobleza separately told reporters that that they found Ayunan in Purok Lugay-Lugay in Barangay Bagua 1, Cotabato City with the help of the people close to him.

The team that served Ayunan a warrant for his arrest had confiscated from him an unlicensed .45 caliber pistol that the CIDG-BAR is to use as evidence in prosecuting him separately for illegal possession of an undocumented firearm.