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THE
Armed Forces is willing to be investigated by the newly
created Presidential Task Force against Media Harassment
in the abduction of Jonas Burgos as it said it has been
its stand to cooperate in any investigation involving
its personnel.
“We will
be more than willing to present individuals who will be
implicated, that has been the stand of the Armed Forces.
We will make available military personnel who may be
implicated in any case so that they will have time to
defend themselves also and face their accusers. We will
make them available, that has been the stand of the
Armed Forces ever since,” military spokesman Lt. Col.
Bartolome Bacarro said.
The task
force headed by Senior State Prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco
said it would investigate the snatching of Burgos
allegedly by Army personnel if the Commission on Human
Rights finished its investigation and could not come up
with a satisfactory recommendation.
The
Palace-created body has included the case on its
investigation list because the missing Burgos is the son
of the late media icon Joe Burgos.
On
Wednesday,
Burgos’ mother, Edita, directly accused Gen. Hermogenes Esperon
Jr., Armed Forces chief of staff, of covering up for his
men, who have been fingered in the abduction by refusing
their demands for a copy of the investigation reports of
the Armed Forces Provost Marshal General and the Army
Inspector General.
Burgos’s
mother, Edita, said Esperon is hiding something in the
report.
The
military, however, denied the claim.
“General
Esperon is not hiding anything. As a matter of fact even
during the start of this issue, the Armed Forces came
out with a statement saying that anybody who will be
implicated or whose name will come out as a result of
the investigation being conducted by the National Police
will be made available,” Bacarro said.
“As a
matter of fact, these officers were made available to
the CIDG [Criminal Investigation and Detection Group]
for investigation and we continue to do this,” he added.
Bacarro
said the military is now studying the possibility of
releasing the provost marshal report, but added that the
Burgos family may not find anything in the report as its
scope was only on how the plate number, registered and
attached to a vehicle that was impounded allegedly for
transporting illegal logs, was lost while inside a
military camp in Bulacan province.
Witnesses said that the plate number (TAB-104) was on
the getaway vehicle that the military-looking men used
after abducting Burgos in Quezon City.
If and
when the report is released, Bacarro assured the Burgos
family that it is not “sanitized.”
“The
subject of the provost marshal general report is not the
abduction of Jonas Burgos. The subject of the provost
marshal report is to determine what happened to the
plate number and it stopped there. It has nothing to do
with the abduction,” Bacarro said.
“The
spirit of the entire content of the report would be
diluted if we will sanitize it,” he added.
Bacarro
clarified that Esperon is not against the release of the
investigation report, it is just that they have to
evaluate it against the disclosure policy of the AFP,
especially that the military considers it as an internal
document. |
