Cooperate on collusion probe, DOJ urges Gracia

A senior official of the Department of Justice will try to get a statement from former Abu Sayyaf hostage Gracia Burnham on her allegation that a military general had colluded with the Islamist rebels.

Justice Undersecretary Merceditas Gutierrez said she will fly to the United States on May 24. She gave herself a week to try and get a statement from Burnham, who lives in Wichita, Kansas.

Burnham has stopped giving interviews after the allegations in her newly released book, "In the Presence of My Enemies," created a stir in the Philippines.

Congress wants to investigate Burnham’s allegations but the longtime Christian missionary said she would not testify and just let her book speak for itself.

President Arroyo had ordered the department to investigate.

Gutierrez said she has sought the assistance of FBI agent John Gray in requesting an audience with Burnham. Gray got a statement from Burnham after her June 7 rescue last year by the Philippine military.

"I don’t think she will refuse to give any statement. She is a good Christian and I think she’ll not refuse this simple request of ours. She’ll cooperate with us in the interest of justice," Gutierrez said.

Burnham would be interviewed and then asked to give a statement under oath in the presence of a Philippine consular official, an FBI representative and her lawyer, Gutierrez said.

"There are clarificatory questions we have to pose," Gutierrez said. "If she is agreeable to our suggestion and she cooperates in answering our clarificatory questions, then that will make our job faster to complete."

In her most stinging revelation, Burnham claimed in her book that Filipino soldiers once brought food to the hostages and the guerrillas because an unidentified general was trying to arrange a 50 percent share of any ransom.

Negotiations by the general in the region — done partly with the help of a local radio station - eventually fell through because the gunmen were only willing to give up 20 percent, according to the book.

In her only interview with a Philippine newspaper since the publication of the book, Burnham told The STAR last week she had no personal knowledge of any wrongdoing by the military and was merely relaying what she heard from or was told by the gunmen.

"If there was collusion between the military and the Abu Sayyaf, God is the righteous judge and someday that will be made right," she later said in a statement.

Considered a top target in Washington’s global war against terrorism, the Abu Sayyaf reportedly has ties with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network.

It claims to be a rebel group fighting for an independent Islamic state in Mindanao but its activities center on kidnapping-for-ransom.

Military prosecutors are investigating a general and two other senior army officers over their alleged collusion with Abu Sayyaf kidnappers.

Brig. Gen. Romeo Dominguez, Gen. Juvenal Narcise and Lt. Col. Eliseo Campued have been summoned to respond to the allegations, which could lead to a court-martial, military chief of staff Narciso Abaya told reporters.

Witnesses alleged at an inquiry conducted by Congress last year that the officers had allowed Abu Sayyaf Muslim guerrillas to escape from a hospital on Basilan with their hostages, including Burnham, her husband Martin, and another American Guillermo Sobero, after they were encircled by government troops in June 2001.

The three officers have rejected charges of collusion with the guerrillas, and denied that they channeled ransom money for the release of a number of Filipino hostages.

"There was a recommendation by the Senate for the military to conduct court-martial proceedings against the accused officers," Abaya said.

"The way we conduct court-martial is, there is going to be a pre-trial investigation to determine whether there is really enough evidence to continue with the general court-martial. It’s standard procedure."

Abaya said he did not believe the three officers had colluded with the Abu Sayyaf, describing Dominguez, an Army division commander in the southern Philippines at the time, as one of the most honest men he had ever met.

He also rejected Burnham’s publicized allegations.

The US government last year branded the Abu Sayyaf a "foreign terrorist organization" and provided electronic intelligence support as well as Special Forces troops to train Filipino soldiers who eventually rescued Burnham a year ago.

Burnham’s husband and Sobero were killed during the year-long hostage crisis. – With AFP report