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Saturday, July 22, 2006
Rebel soldier confirms prelate harbored him, fellow renegade
AN OFFICER of the mutinous Magdalo Group who recently sided with government disclosed that Novaliches Bishop Antonio Tobias, a critic of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, coddled him and a fellow mutineer after they escaped from an Army detention facility in January.
In a sworn statement, 1st Lieutenant Lawrence San Juan said he and 1st Lieutenant Sonny Sarmiento stayed at Tobias residence on January 20, three days after their escape from Fort Bonifacio, until he was captured on February 21 in Batangas.
San Juan said when he, Sarmiento and two other escapees -- Captain Nathaniel Rabonza and 1st Lieutenant Patricio Bumidang, they took a tricycle upon reaching the C-5 road and proceeded to a "housing area" where he called lawyer Christopher Belmonte.
Upon Belmonte's advice, he said they went to Eastwood in Libis, Pasig City to link up with the lawyer. He said they met with Belmonte in a pizza parlor in
Libis.
"From there, we proceeded to Forbes Park where another vehicle was waiting for us. Belmonte instructed me to transfer at the other vehicle together with Lieutenant Sarmiento. A driver with the alias Jimmy and Friday, was with us in the vehicle," he said.
Initially, San Juan they were "placed" in a undisclosed convent where nuns took care of them. "After the third day, we moved out of the house with Belmonte and Friday as our guide and transferred us to a church somewhere in Manila," he said.
San Juan said they stayed at the church for several hours until "Lieutenant Sarmiento and me were brought to the house of Bishop Antonio Tobias in East Fairview, Quezon City. Bishop Tobias gave us refuge from Jan. 20 2006 until I was caught on Feb. 21, 2006," said San Juan.
San Juan was arrested in the company of Belmonte after allegedly meeting with communist personalities in Batangas. Rabonza, Sarmiento, and Bumidang were recaptured last July 7 in a safe house in Fairview, Quezon City.
In Malacañang, Cabinet secretary Ricardo Saludo said Bishop Tobias should just cooperate with investigators who are looking into the efforts to bring down the Arroyo government following his claim that he did not break any law when he provided shelter to some fugitive Magdalo soldiers.
Saludo said Tobias had nothing to fear especially if he did not violate any law as he claimed.
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, for his part, said it would be best to withhold any more comment on the issue and simply let the investigations take it course.
Bunye, who is also Presidential spokesman, also said Tobias and other members of the Catholic Church are free, like other Filipino citizens, to do what they want and to say what they want as it is guaranteed under the freedom of speech.
Tobias dared government to sue him, adding that he does not regret his decision to give sanctuary to San Juan and Sarmiento.
Meanwhile, a religious group said Friday that linking six Catholic bishops to the foiled coup attempt last February could only be labeled as a means to silence the critics of the Arroyo administration.
Most Reverend Alberto Ramento, chairperson of the Ecumenical Bishops Forum (EBF), said the move to implicate Archbishops Angel Lagdameo and Oscar Cruz and Bishops Tobias, Deogracias Iniguez, Teodoro Bacani and Julio Labayen in the thwarted coup try is "a clear scheme to suppress the people that are critical of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo."
The EBF is a fellowship of bishops from the Roman Catholic, the Episcopal, the United Methodist, the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), and the Philippine Independent Churches (PIC).
Ramento said the attack on religious leaders is a blatant disregard of the rights of the people that should be stopped. "What the Arroyo government is doing to the six bishops is a sign of its rotten and moribund state," he said.
"The six bishops are teachers and defenders of the faith. They teach us to hold on to the truth and pursue it at all times and in all places. In so doing, they are vanguards lest we become sycophants to a despot or a government obsessed with power," he added. (VR/JMR/MSN/Sunnex)
(July 22, 2006 issue)
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