Urban poor activist files charges against military officials

An urban poor activist has filed criminal charges against military officials before the Office of the Ombudsman over the weekend.

Lourdes Rubrico, 63, and a member of the group KADAMAY, hailed to court members of the Philippine Air Force who allegedly abducted her in Cavite City.

Accompanied by her lawyer, Rex Fernandez, Rubrico submitted on Friday before the Office of the Deputy Ombudsman for the Military and other Law Enforcement Office (MOLFO), evidence including an alleged military document – a mission order – which she was able to steal during her one-week detention inside a military camp.

In her six-page affidavit, Rubrico claimed she was forcibly taken by armed men on April 3, just after she has taken part in a Lenten Week "pabasa" she helped organize in a poor community in Dasmariñas, Cavite.

She claimed that military officials led by Philippine Air Force Intelligence officer Capt. Angelo Cuaresma and his men did not present any court issued warrant of arrest when she was brought inside the Fernando Airbase in Lipa, Batangas.

Neither was she allowed to contact her lawyers or filed any charges against her before the court. She was merely informed that she is accused of being a communist and was threatened to be buried in a shallow grave if she would not disclose the identities of "other communists" in the area.

Convinced that Rubrico will not give them any useful information despite threatening to kill her, Cuaresma was taken out of the camp and dropped along a road in Dasmariñas on June 10.