Thursday, August 21, 2008 Cabuay is new Nica chief
PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo named deputy national security adviser Pedro Cabuay Jr. as the new director general of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (Nica) vice Cesar Garcia who retired last month, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said.
Cabuay was chief of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Isafp) before he was named to the Office of the National Security Adviser.
He had also served as commander of the Southern Luzon Command and of the 61st Infantry Battalion.
He was among those who led the Army in the arrest of then Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Visayas Commission secretary Arturo Tabara and other rebel leaders in Negros in 1994.
Nica is the lead intelligence collection and analysis arm of the Philippine government in charge of carrying out intelligence operations similar to the workings of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
As security adviser, Cabuay was one of those who oversaw the implementation of Republic Act 9372 or “The Human Security Act,” which allows police to detain suspected terrorists without charge for three days and considers rebellion as an act of terrorism.
The law also allows court-authorized surveillance of suspects, including wiretapping, tracking and freezing the suspects’ assets.
In September last year, the National Democratic Front (NDF) accused Garcia and Cabuay of gathering information about left-leaning activists from Dutch officials in The Netherlands.
The NDF said the information might have been acquired from the NDF information office and the houses of six NDF personnel, which were raided by Dutch policemen simultaneous with the arrest of CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison in Utrecht on August 28.
Sison had been arrested for the murder of two former allies, Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara, in 2003 and 2004.
Seized during the raids were computers, flash memory disks and digital cameras. Documents like phonebooks were also confiscated from another NDF leader Luis Jalandoni and his wife Connie Ledesma and other NDF staff members Ruth de Leon, Dan Borjal, Boyet Gonzalez, and Aldo Gonzales. (JMR/WV/Sunnex)
