Court Branch 19 in Bacoor City, Cavite this afternoon to call for the junking of charges filed by the military against labor advocate Adelberto Silva, women’s right activist Sharon Cabusao, and their companion Isidro de Lima.
KMU claimed that Silva, Cabusao and de Lima were illegally arrested because the search carried out by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, Special Weapons And Tactics Team in their Bacoor residence last June 1, was illegal as the police operatives did not have a search warrant.
It backed the political detainees’ lawyers from the Public Interest Law Center who asked the court to quash information for illegal possession of explosives, to render inadmissible as evidence the “rocket-propelled grenades” that were allegedly retreived from the three, and that the cases against the three be junked.
“Silva, Cabusao and de Lima should be freed immediately. There is no reason why a trial against them should proceed. The premise of the case against them is a violation of their constitutional and democratic rights,” said Elmer “Bong” Labog, KMU chairperson and convenor of the Free Adel Silva Committee.
The labor leader said that like previous governments, the Aquino government has filed trumped-up charges against National Democratic Front of the Philippines’ consultants in peace negotiations with the government in order to keep them in jail.
“The case of Silva, Cabusao and de Lima is no different from that of other NDFP consultants. They are in jail not because the legal basis for keeping them in jail is strong but because the government wants to keep them in jail, and is using its power to invent charges,” Labog added.
The KMU leader said Silva is a long-time labor activist and organizer and is a consultant of the national labor center on matters related to the peace talks, national industrialization, and pro-worker labor laws.
Posted By: Lynne Pingoy
