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PALAYAN
CITY, Nueva Ecija—A special agency created two years ago
and believed by critics of the Arroyo administration to
be snooping on them and harassing them could be behind
the murder charges against four progressive party-list
leaders.
Nueva
Ecija Regional Trial Court (RTC) No. 40 Judge Evelyn
Turla started hearing on Friday the murder cases of
Bayan Muna Reps. Satur Ocampo and Teodoro Casiño,
Gabriela Rep. Liza Maza and former Anakpawis Rep. Rafael
Mariano.
The four
were accused of conspiring for the separate killings of
alleged New People’s Army (NPA) renegades Carlito
Bayudang and Jimmy Peralta of Bongabon, Nueva Ecija, and
Danilo Felipe of Guimba, Nueva Ecija. Only the Bongabon
cases were heard so far; the Guimba case had yet to be
raffled at the Guimba RTC.
Bayudang
was killed on May 6, 2004, in a mistaken identity.
Peralta has been identified as the actual target,
according to the charge sheet, and was a brother
allegedly of former NPA Nueva Ecija chief Ricardo
Peralta on December 23, 2003. Felipe was allegedly
abducted and later killed at Sitio Balic-balic, barangay
Narvacan, Guimba on February 17, 2001.
The
Nueva Ecija Prosecutors’ Office filed the charges
against the four progressive party-list leaders and
known critics of the President only this April 18.
Defense
lawyer Romeo Capulong requested Judge Turla to let the
prosecution produce the police records that were made
basis for the charges. “There was some prosecutorial
misconduct because the prosecution failed to show the
police reports that would directly link the accused to
the killings. Besides, we have not seen the complainants
and the witnesses,” he told the BusinessMirror later,
after the hearing was reset for May 17.
Capulong
added the accused were not given the due process they
deserved during the preliminary investigation.
The
complainants, according to the charge sheet, are the
widows of the slain alleged NPA leaders—Isabelita
Bayudang, Medelyn Felipe and Mayumi Peralta.
The same
complainants, the defense said, filed disqualification
cases against Bayan Muna, Anakpawis and Gabriela
party-lists in the 2007 elections at the Commission on
Elections, which was subsequently dismissed.
The
charge sheet, citing a witness, said “the four accused,
in a meeting with the regional leaders of the CPP
[Communist Party of the Philippines]-NPA in Nueva Ecija
sometime in August 2000, ordered the liquidation of
former CPP-NPA members who would support the party-list
Akbayan.”
Ocampo
said the charges against them were “purely a rehash.”
“They recycled the events and we believed the DOJ
[Department of Justice] and Malacañang were behind as
seen from the pattern of harassing critics of the
[Arroyo] administration.”
The
cases, they argued, are “already absorbed” in the
rebellion charges earlier filed at the Makati Trial
Court, which was dismissed by the Supreme Court on June
1, 2007.
Ocampo
and his coaccused suspected that the Interagency Legal
Action Group (IALAG), created in 2006 by Executive Order
493, was behind the latest murder charges against them.
IALAG is
headed by National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales
and composed of the DOJ, the Department of National
Defense, the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency,
the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the National Bureau
of Investigations and other units as may be tasked by
the national security adviser.
Because
of the popular suspicion that this agency is snooping on
the activities of the Arroyo administration critics and
afterwards file nonbailable charges against them, United
Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston, in his report
on the extra-judicial killings and disappearances in the
Philippines, recommended the abolition of this agency. |
