Court enters 'not guilty' plea for Satur, Tiamzons in killing of 15 people in Leyte 20 years ago

From InterAksyon (May 7): Court enters 'not guilty' plea for Satur, Tiamzons in killing of 15 people in Leyte 20 years ago



Benito and Wilma Tiamzon board a bus at their March 2014 inquest. INTERAKSYON.COM FILE PHOTO

Former party-list representative Satur Ocampo, who once served as National Democratic Front spokesman, and his co-accused NDF leaders Benito and Wilma Tiamzon and several others  refused to enter a plea on Thursday in a case involving the massacre of 15 people over 20 years ago in Leyte, in what the government says was part of the communist rebels' purge of suspected infiltrators.

As a result, Judge Thelma Bunyi-Medina of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court's Branch 32 entered a “not guilty" plea for them during arraignment Thursday.

Ocampo was a former Bayan Muna party-list representative.

In the 60s and 70s, he was a noted business journalist who went underground during martial law and fought the Marcos dictatorship as a ranking NDF leader, but was caught twice and detained. When Marcos was driven from power in 1986, he became one of the Left's key negotiators in peace talks with the government.

Sought for comment, Ocampo said they are awaiting the decision on their petition for certiorari before the Court of Appeals because the accusations are not credible.

The judge set the pre-trial hearing on July 30.

The Tiamzons were arrested last year in Cebu along with five other suspected rebel personalities. They are detained at the Custodial Center of the Philippine National Polcie (PNP) at Camp Crame in Quezon City.

The government holds that the massacre was carried out in Inopacan, Leyte, by the New People’s Army (NPA) with knowledge of the three accused to rid their ranks of suspected military moles. Families of the 15 victims filed murder charges against the accused.

Accounts from the families and witnesses said the massacre involved up to 70 victims in one village alone, Barangay Sapang Daku. Some of the remains were exhumed in 2007.

The case was first filed in Hilongos, Leyte, but was transferred to Manila on request of the accused.

Charged along  with Ocampo and the Tiamzons are Vicente Ladlad, Randal Echanis and Rafael Baylosis, among others.

The killings were seen as part of the NPA’s “kampanyang ahos” (purging) that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) allegedly ordered. The NDF is the negotiating arm of the CPP-NPA.

The CPP-NPA-NDF hierarchy subsequently realized the negative implications of the purge and thus started its own “rectification movement,” but by then the leadership was struggling with factionalism and dissention.

Founded 46 years ago, the CPP-NPA-NDF wages what is described as the longest communist insurgency in Asia.

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/110156/court-enters-not-guilty-plea-for-satur-tiamzons-in-killing-of-15-people-in-leyte-20-years-ago