Army denies torturing ranking communist leader Principe

By Ronron
December 6, 2007

The Philippine Army denied on Thursday the allegation of arrested ranking communist leader Elizabeth Principe that she was tortured by members of the Army’s Intelligence Service Group (ISG) while under their custody late last month.

Principe, 56, consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Negotiating Panel, claimed in a December 3 statement that she was blindfolded, handcuffed, and for three days, her ears were inundated with sounds, since she was taken by military personnel on November 28 in Quezon City.

She also claimed that she was denied of her right to counsel.

“She’s not tortured. That’s (torture) the usual allegation of communist rebels arrested or captured so as to divert the attention of the public from the atrocities they had committed and the charges filed against them,” Army spokesman Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres, Jr. said yesterday.

Torres reiterated that Principe was arrested by virtue of several warrants for the crimes of rebellion, robbery, kidnapping, arson and murder.

He described her to be a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

Torres said they are looking at Principe’s possible link with the “group that attempted to overthrow the government last November 29,” considering her presence in Metro Manila the day ahead.

But Principe denied any involvement in the November 29 standoff in Makati City, saying she was just lax “in taking security measures” in getting a medical check-up at the Fern Laboratory in Quezon City “in this time of militant movement for the ouster of the Arroyo regime.”

“I was not even aware of the efforts of the Trillanes-Lim group, but I am ridiculously being implicated in the events that occurred at the Manila Peninsula Hotel,” she said.

“It is a lie that my arrest stopped the big protest rally against the government last November 30. The revolutionary actions against the government by the conscious and organized masses continue everyday in different forms all over the country,” she added./DMS