Dutch government poised to expel Joma — PNP

Communist leader Jose Ma. Sison may soon find himself looking for another country to take him in as the Dutch government is reportedly poised to throw him out for his alleged involvement in terrorism, a police intelligence official said yesterday.

Director Roberto Delfin, chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) directorate for intelligence, said the Dutch government is currently preparing terrorism charges and expulsion proceedings against Sison, founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

Delfin was quoting information he received from his counterpart in the Netherlands where Sison has been in exile since the 1980s.

"I was told that in a month or two, terrorism charges will be filed against him (Sison) by the Dutch government," Delfin told The STAR.

"I don’t think he will come back here," he said.

The charges, Delfin said, stem from Sison’s link with the New People’s Army (NPA), the CPP’s military wing which the United States and the European Union has listed as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).

The Dutch government is investigating this, Delfin said.

Philippine authorities have scored the NPA for having conducted more terrorist atrocities than their so-called tactical guerrilla operations.

The NPA has owned up to countless political assassinations for alleged human rights abuses, and attacks on business establishments in rural areas as well as big oil companies in Metro Manila.

Sison is joined by several other ranking officials of the CPP and its political arm, the National Democratic Front, in the Netherlands. Sison has been applying for political asylum there but his application has been denied twice.

Several sources claimed that one of the countries being considered by Sison to live in once he is ordered to leave the Netherlands is China.

Sison had eluded arrest during his younger years as a revolutionary leader by going to China.

According to Delfin, the investigation to unmask Sison’s ties with the NPA came after the freezing of accounts and other assets of the communist rebels by the Dutch government in response to Washington’s FTO tag on the NPA.

"From what I’ve got, in the process of their investigation, the Dutch government was able to confirm that the Armando Liwanag of the NPA and Sison is one and the same person," Delfin said.

Commander Liwanag, believed to be Sison’s nom de guerre in the NPA movement, has been ordering the 8,000-strong NPA to launch an intensified armed struggle against the Philippine government and civilian targets.

Only a few days ago, heavily armed NPA rebels simultaneously attacked an Army detachment in Rodriguez, Rizal and in Agusan del Norte. Fighting has also been sporadic in the province of Batangas in the past week between government troops and communist rebels.