Incredible coincidence
Daisy Arago, executive director of the Quezon city-based labor rights organization, Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) and convener of Free Atty Saladero et al Coalition, “”For a fulltime lawyer, a columnist, resource person in paralegal training, a diabetic and survivor of two strokes, such allegations against Atty. Saladero are incredibly unbelievable if not plain stupid. You see a pattern here, all the 72 accused except for two persons are the same respondents in the Rizal murder case. This is an incredible coincidence, if you can call it that.”
“It is really absurd that human rights defenders like Atty. Saladero and five others get arrested and detained for several months for trumped up charges, released on technical grounds only to be surprised by another murder case linked to an alleged NPA activity in another province and forced to live a life on the run,” Arago added.
Before the filing of charges in relation to the Mindoro incident, Saladero and 26 other activists were slapped with arson, destruction of property and conspiracy to commit rebellion in connection with the burning of Globe telecommunications towers allegedly by the NPA in Batangas on August 3, 2008. The 27 were also accused in the Mindoro case.
The CTUHR reported that on Feb. 11, police mobile patrol cars drove around Saladero’s office at E. Rodriguez Avenue in Quezon City. Tinted vehicles and motorcycles without plate numbers frequented the area. Suspicious-looking men watching the entrance and clients going inside and outside the office were spotted.
Writ of amparo
Lawyer Noel Neri, Saladero’s counsel and colleague at the PLACE, said, “They will continue and will surely find way to detain them again.”
Saladero and other activists filed a petition for writ of amparo at the Supreme Court, Feb. 16.(Bulatlat.com)
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