MANILA, Philippines - The military yesterday denied that the US staged a drone strike in the Philippines to kill Indonesian terrorist Umar Patek in 2006.
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesman Col. Arnulfo Burgos Jr. said US troops in the country are not involved in combat operations.
“That’s against the law. The United States does not participate in (actual) military operations here in the Philippines,” Burgos said, citing the 1987 Constitution, which forbids the involvement of foreign armed forces in combat operations.
He said the activities of American soldiers in the country are limited to sharing of information and training.
Former AFP chief Hermogenes Esperon Jr. said the military had conducted air surveillance under his watch but US soldiers were not involved.
“The American forces that belong to the Joint Special Operations Task Force merely provided technical assistance. They were not active in combat,” said Esperon, who served as AFP chief from July 21, 2006 to May 12, 2008.
He said while the AFP had acquired aircraft to beef up its capability, it never had a Predator drone.
“We sent planes for surveillance but we did not stage an attack using drones,” he said in Filipino.
An article that appeared in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times claimed that US troops in the Philippines staged a drone strike that targeted Patek in 2006.
In the article “The Drone Zone,” writer Mark Mazzetti said a Predator drone was sent to the jungles of the Philippines to eliminate the international terrorist.
The attack, which reportedly involved a “barrage of Hellfire missiles,” failed to kill Patek, who was tagged in the 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia that claimed the lives of 202 people.
He has been sentenced to a 20-year jail term for his participation in the Bali bombings.
Patek is a member of Jemaah Islamiyah, which has links to international terror cell al-Qaeda and local terrorist group Abu Sayyaf.
Earlier reports claimed that Patek had managed to sneak into the Philippines to meet with local militants.
In 2010, ABS-CBN News aired video footage showing Patek carrying a rifle. The video was said to have been taken in Tawi-Tawi.
The same New York Times article claimed that the Pentagon is increasing its fleet of drones by 30 percent.
No violation on sovereignty
As this developed, Muntinlupa City Rep. Rodolfo Biazon, chairman of the House committee on national defense and security, said that there was no violation of the country’s sovereignty in the overflights of US drones in southern Philippines.
But he said the matter of air strikes against wanted terror suspects must be clarified because “there are existing regional and international protocols as well as the (1951) Mutual Defense Treaty, where there are agreements on exchange of intelligence and information and the like.”
“There is no violation of our sovereignty in those overflights, which I assume, I think had the consent of the government at that time. If the President has just asked the US government to conduct surveillance flights (over Philippine-claimed areas in the West Philippine Sea), wouldn’t that be consent already?” he said.
Biazon said intelligence sharing or joint operations between allied nations had been occurring since the last century and even became more frequent since the global war on terror.
He added that the reported operations of US drones or unmanned aerial vehicles did not violate constitutional provisions banning foreign bases or nuclear weapons.
Citizen’s Battle Against Corruption party-list Rep. Sherwin Tugna agreed with Biazon, saying the air strike was done in pursuit of an international terrorist.
“Under international law, mass murder and terrorism are violations of the law of nations. The prospective arrest and attack on suspects can be done in any country,” Tugna said.
However, Akbayan party-list Rep. Walden Bello said he is considering filing charges against former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the secretaries of the Department of Foreign Affairs and National Defense “for being accomplices to the murder.”
Quezon City Rep. Winston Castelo said the report “does not seem encouraging,” since the US should have consulted Philippine officials first before the strike.
Castelo, however, welcomed the US offer to help the country strengthen its maritime patrolling capability. Paolo Romero