CHR urges filing of charges vs soldiers over Sulu deaths
Lawyer Jose Manuel Mamauag, CHR regional director, released their findings yesterday, recommending that charges be filed against the officers and men of the Philippine Navy Special Warfare Group and the Army’s special Light Reaction Company involved directly or indirectly in the mission, planning, operation, intelligence gathering, command and control of the incident, that led to the deaths of eight residents of Barangay Ipil under the principles of direct participation and command responsibility.
“Administrative sanction covers command responsibility. There is no penal law for command responsibility, except administrative. The ones who planned (and) initiated the mission… are the accountable officers,” he said.
Mamauag lamented that the Maimbung incident happened on the same day a year ago when Armed Forces chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr. issued a directive on “strict adherence to the doctrine of command responsibility.”
Maj. Gen. Ruben Rafael, chief of Joint Task Force Comet, said they are still awaiting the results of the Armed Forces Inspector General’s investigation.
“We have to follow the military justice system,” Rafael said, adding though that they respect the CHR’s findings.
“The Feb. 4, 2008 Barangay Ipil incident is a clear case of grave breaches of human rights of the victims – a violation of human rights,” stated the six-page report which Mamauag transmitted to the CHR’s national office.
Mamauag said their report also called on concerned national government agencies and local government units to extend all possible assistance – compensation, rehabilitation, psychological and traumatic therapy, stress-debriefing, counseling or any form of assistance – to the families of those killed and those who survived the alleged attack.
During its nearly one-week investigation, the CHR regional office documented what it described as the “tragic consequences of the wanton carnage.”
“True enough, the pictures that were secured may not be describable through mere rhetorics and poetic articulation as they blatantly speak for themselves,” the report said.
The CHR report detailed how the troops allegedly attacked the village from sea and land positions and pillaged the victims’ houses.
Mamauag said the deaths of the two soldiers could be the result of self-defense by vacationing Army Cpl. Ibnon Wahib to the first volley of gunfire.
“By self-preservation, it was the strategy of the victim (Wahib) because in the first burst of fire he might not have recognized the marauders, until such time that he came to know that they were government troops, (which explains) why he was shouting ‘Papa Alpha!’(Philippine Army),” Mamauag said.
Based on the account of his wife, Wahib was hogtied although he had introduced himself as an Army soldier and was allegedly shot from behind while kneeling.
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