RP Communists want commander release

RP Communists want commander release

MANILA (DPA): Communist rebel negotiators urged the government yesterday to release an arrested ranking field commander in the southern Philippines as a sign of goodwill in ongoing peace negotiations aimed at ending one of Asia's longest-running leftist insurgencies.

Luis Jalandoni, chief negotiator of the National Democratic Front (NDF), said Amado Payot alias "Ka Benzar" was captured while "in transit to a consultation with NDF Mindanao chairperson Jorge Madlos on matters pertaining to the peace negotiations".

Jalandoni said the NDF panel will raise Payot's case when it meets with the government panel Monday in the Netherlands to sign an agreement on human rights, the first comprehensive pact since peace talks started nearly four years ago.

"Ka Benzar is a revolutionary and not a common criminal," Jalandoni said in a statement released in Manila. "It would be against the legal posture of the government itself if he would be accused of so many ordinary crimes, instead of a simple case of rebellion which is bailable."

Payot was arrested on March 2 after a brief firefight with patrolling troops in North Cotabato province, some 900 kilometres south of Manila. He has a standing warrant of arrest for the slaying of two police personnel in April 1988, when he also robbed a truck carrying rice in Digos, Davao del Sur.

He is notorious for leading leftist rebels on a June 1989 attack on a farming village in Digos, shooting to death or beheading some 40 tribesmen attending a mass in a makeshift chapel. One of those beheaded was a pastor, a member of the Bagobo tribe who had converted to Catholicism.

Jalandoni, who was in self-imposed exile in the Netherlands for 11 years, returned to the Philippines in January to hold consultations with rebel forces and human rights groups. He is scheduled to travel to the Philippines again.