Palace: FBI not holding office in Camp Crame

Manila, Philippines -  Malacañang categorically denied yesterday reports that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is holding office in Camp Crame and FBI agents have been interrogating suspects, including political prisoners.

“That is absolutely not true,” Secretary Ricky Carandang of the Presidential Communications Strategic Planning and Development Office told reporters at a news briefing.

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said she could not be certain whether the reports, particularly the accusation of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), that the FBI and other US-based intelligence agencies hold an office in Camp Crame are true.

“I don’t want to automatically deny it because you might say we have not checked, na hindi pa rin kami nag-check but it is something that it is not happening from what we know and from what we understand,” she said.

Sources, however, said the FBI is indeed being allowed to maintain an office in the custodial center at the Philippine National Police (PNP) headquarters in Camp Crame.

The CPP said the office is in the detention center itself and the FBI occupies a unit in a “nearby condominium,” according to activist Alan Jazmines and his fellow inmates, who informed the authorities about the situation.

Jazmines wrote the Commission on Human Rights, the Department of Justice and the Karapatan Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights.

The CPP condemned the government for allowing US law enforcement agencies to use the PNP headquarters as a “base for its intelligence operations and facility for the rendition of several foreign nationals.”

Jazmines claims to be a peace consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the umbrella organization of the CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army.

The inmates also alleged that three of the prisoners were Indonesians arrested in Malaysia and Indonesia and apparently brought to the prison facility in the country allegedly at the behest of the US government.