Esperon declassifies report related to Burgos abduction case

By Ronron
October 24, 2007

Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, Jr. has decided to declassify the report of the military regarding its investigation on the involvement in the Burgos abduction case of a license plate that was supposed to be inside an Army camp in Bulacan province.

In an interview Wednesday, Esperon said he is ready to submit a copy of the report to any court that will ask for it.

“I have declassified the report and so, I’m ready to present that to the competent court,” he said.

Joseph Jonas Burgos, an agriculture trainer for left-leaning farmer’s group in Central Luzon, was forcibly taken from a mall in Quezon City last April. The police and military had earlier said that the people behind it are members of the communist movement who are tasked to carry out possibly a purge mission.

But the family of Burgos belies the claim of the authorities, saying that the missing victim is not a member of the New People’s Army. The family has already brought the case to higher courts.

The family believes it is the military behind the abduction because of the TAB-194 license plate that was used in the abduction. The said plate was later traced by police investigators to originally belong to a vehicle impounded inside an Army camp in Norzagaray, Bulacan.

“I thought that for the sake of upholding and protection of human rights, I might as well declassify this since it has become one issue where it is interpreted as blocking the right of a parent or of an individual to be afforded human rights,” Esperon said.

Esperon expressed hope that with his decision, the public will view it as “one of our ways to show that indeed, the Armed Forces of the Philippines is a protector of human rights.”

The AFP leadership for several times has initially snubbed the order of the Court of Appeals for it to give the Burgos family a copy of its investigation report regarding the license plates.

It has cited the confidentiality policy of the government as far as classified documents are concerned.

“Our investigation into the case was simply to find out how the plate number got lost. We confined our investigation to that because there was an ongoing investigation on the criminal aspect of the case,” Esperon said.

“The plate number got lost because it was left there by the battalion that vacated the place when it went on retraining… We do not know how it got into the (Burgos abduction) scene, how it got involved in the commission of the abduction,” he added.

But while he can say this time that the military organization is not involved in the abduction of Burgos, Esperon said they can not rule out the involvement of a military personnel./DMS