ianstone
09-23-2010, 02:32 PM
British 'gun smuggler' shot dead in Philippines had begged for police protection
By Richard Shears (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Richard+Shears)
Last updated at 11:23 AM on 22nd September 2010
Add to My Stories (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1314182/British-gun-smuggler-shot-dead-Philippines-begged-police-protection.html)
A British sea captain who asked police in the Philippines for protection from a weapons-smuggling cartel last year has been gunned down as he drove his car north of Manila.
Bruce Jones, 50, was shot by two assassins on a motorbike as he and his Filipina wife drove through Angeles City, two hours' drive from Manila, the Philippines capital.
He was the third Briton to die in as many weeks and at first it was thought he had been targeted, along with a total of five Western men, in a copycat hate murder.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/09/22/article-1314182-0B4C67E8000005DC-116_468x396.jpg Fatal: Angeles City, located 50 miles north west of Manila, where Bruce Jones was shot by two gunmen
Following a pattern of assassinations, two men on a motorbike drew up alongside the grey Mitsubishi Lancer car and fired at Mr Jones, whose home town in the UK has yet to be identified.
But it emerged later today that Mr Jones was a man living in fear of his life after authorities said he was involved in smuggling assault rifles into the Philippines for use by terrorists in the south of the country.
Mr Jones, who has lived in the Philippines for the past 15 years, told a Manila newspaper last year that he wanted to clear his name, insisting he was neither a terrorist nor a member of an international gun-running syndicate.
He claimed that the guns on his ship had been legally acquired in Indonesia and he was to deliver them to a building in the Philippines city of Makatiy.
The cargo, he insisted had been cleared by the Philippines National Police.
Enlarge http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/09/22/article-1314182-0B4C6E9A000005DC-919_468x286.jpg (http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/09/22/article-1314182-0B4C6E9A000005DC-919_468x286_popup.jpg)Terror: Mr Jones, a ship captain, is the fifth Western man to have been brutally murdered in three weeks in the Philippines
'When the 20 crates of guns were loaded on to my ship, they were supervised and guarded by around 50 policemen or soldiers from Indonesia,' he said.
Mr Jones told the paper that when authorities seized the cargo vessel, only five wooden crates were intact and the 15 boxes of guns they had contained had been 'slipped out' by the syndicate.
When he was attacked and killed today, Mr Jones's wife, Maricel, was injured by a bullet but police said she would recover after hospital treatment.
She has told police that she and her husband were on their way to meet friends at a firing range when two men on a motorbike drew alongside the car and began firing.
Mr Jones, who was living in the nearby city of Olongapo, is one of hundreds of Western men married to, or living with, Filipinas.
In some cases police have discovered they have been attacked by relatives of the women, sometimes by an enraged boyfriend or a deserted husband.
The murder method is often the same - two men on a motorbike firing the fatal shots and then speeding away into the traffic.
Just one day before Mr Jones's assassination, an American identified as 41-year-old Steven Kindy, from Michigan, was fatally hit by six bullets as he travelled in a minibus in the southern city of Iligan.
Mr Kindy's murder followed the gunshot death on the same day of former US serviceman James Basham, 63, who was about to get on to his motorbike in the northern Philippines when he was shot by gunmen.
Earlier this month British businessman Anthony Nicholas, 64, who with his Filipina wife Judith ran a small resort south of Manila, was held up by gunmen as he rode his motor cycle with his wife.
He was fatally shot a number of times and the gunmen, their identities hidden by helmets and visors, sped away on their motorbike.
What has been a terrifying month for Westerners began with the stabbing murder of 28-year-old Scotsman John Macdonald from Aberdeen.
The merchant seaman was attacked in the house of a Filipina woman he had, according to police, met in Singapore and had kept in touch with on the internet before he arrived in the Philippines.
Police said the woman, Nanqueen 'Nancy' Romero, had told Mr Macdonald that her live-in boyfriend was her brother.
But police have established from her that the boyfriend became enraged at what he saw as Mr Macdonald's romantic approaches to Miss Romero and fatally stabbed him and wounded her with the same knife.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1314182/British-gun-smuggler-shot-dead-Philippines-begged-police-protection.html#ixzz10NYXRiij
By Richard Shears (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Richard+Shears)
Last updated at 11:23 AM on 22nd September 2010
Add to My Stories (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1314182/British-gun-smuggler-shot-dead-Philippines-begged-police-protection.html)
A British sea captain who asked police in the Philippines for protection from a weapons-smuggling cartel last year has been gunned down as he drove his car north of Manila.
Bruce Jones, 50, was shot by two assassins on a motorbike as he and his Filipina wife drove through Angeles City, two hours' drive from Manila, the Philippines capital.
He was the third Briton to die in as many weeks and at first it was thought he had been targeted, along with a total of five Western men, in a copycat hate murder.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/09/22/article-1314182-0B4C67E8000005DC-116_468x396.jpg Fatal: Angeles City, located 50 miles north west of Manila, where Bruce Jones was shot by two gunmen
Following a pattern of assassinations, two men on a motorbike drew up alongside the grey Mitsubishi Lancer car and fired at Mr Jones, whose home town in the UK has yet to be identified.
But it emerged later today that Mr Jones was a man living in fear of his life after authorities said he was involved in smuggling assault rifles into the Philippines for use by terrorists in the south of the country.
Mr Jones, who has lived in the Philippines for the past 15 years, told a Manila newspaper last year that he wanted to clear his name, insisting he was neither a terrorist nor a member of an international gun-running syndicate.
He claimed that the guns on his ship had been legally acquired in Indonesia and he was to deliver them to a building in the Philippines city of Makatiy.
The cargo, he insisted had been cleared by the Philippines National Police.
Enlarge http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/09/22/article-1314182-0B4C6E9A000005DC-919_468x286.jpg (http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/09/22/article-1314182-0B4C6E9A000005DC-919_468x286_popup.jpg)Terror: Mr Jones, a ship captain, is the fifth Western man to have been brutally murdered in three weeks in the Philippines
'When the 20 crates of guns were loaded on to my ship, they were supervised and guarded by around 50 policemen or soldiers from Indonesia,' he said.
Mr Jones told the paper that when authorities seized the cargo vessel, only five wooden crates were intact and the 15 boxes of guns they had contained had been 'slipped out' by the syndicate.
When he was attacked and killed today, Mr Jones's wife, Maricel, was injured by a bullet but police said she would recover after hospital treatment.
She has told police that she and her husband were on their way to meet friends at a firing range when two men on a motorbike drew alongside the car and began firing.
Mr Jones, who was living in the nearby city of Olongapo, is one of hundreds of Western men married to, or living with, Filipinas.
In some cases police have discovered they have been attacked by relatives of the women, sometimes by an enraged boyfriend or a deserted husband.
The murder method is often the same - two men on a motorbike firing the fatal shots and then speeding away into the traffic.
Just one day before Mr Jones's assassination, an American identified as 41-year-old Steven Kindy, from Michigan, was fatally hit by six bullets as he travelled in a minibus in the southern city of Iligan.
Mr Kindy's murder followed the gunshot death on the same day of former US serviceman James Basham, 63, who was about to get on to his motorbike in the northern Philippines when he was shot by gunmen.
Earlier this month British businessman Anthony Nicholas, 64, who with his Filipina wife Judith ran a small resort south of Manila, was held up by gunmen as he rode his motor cycle with his wife.
He was fatally shot a number of times and the gunmen, their identities hidden by helmets and visors, sped away on their motorbike.
What has been a terrifying month for Westerners began with the stabbing murder of 28-year-old Scotsman John Macdonald from Aberdeen.
The merchant seaman was attacked in the house of a Filipina woman he had, according to police, met in Singapore and had kept in touch with on the internet before he arrived in the Philippines.
Police said the woman, Nanqueen 'Nancy' Romero, had told Mr Macdonald that her live-in boyfriend was her brother.
But police have established from her that the boyfriend became enraged at what he saw as Mr Macdonald's romantic approaches to Miss Romero and fatally stabbed him and wounded her with the same knife.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1314182/British-gun-smuggler-shot-dead-Philippines-begged-police-protection.html#ixzz10NYXRiij