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Aetas 'tortured' by military seek to join legal challenge to anti-terror law


Two Aetas who claim they were tortured by the military and falsely charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 have asked the Supreme Court (SC) to allow them to join the petitions challenging the law.

Japer Gurung and Junior Ramos through their lawyers filed a petition in intervention, echoing the call of the groups behind the 37 petitions that the SC is taking up in oral arguments on Tuesday afternoon.

Gurung and Ramos have a unique position: according to their lawyers, they are the first known individuals charged for violating Section 4(a) of the anti-terrorism law.

Section 4(a) provides one among many definitions of terrorism in the law: "engag[ing] in acts intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to any person, or endangers a person’s life."

The other petitioners questioned the law as it was written, and not in connection with specific incidents where it was applied.

Because they were charged and detained under the "vague and void" law, Gurung and Ramos "suffered a direct personal injury" and thus have actual interest in challenging it, their lawyers from the National Union of Peoples' Lawyers (NUPL) said.

"That Petitioners-Intervenors have the requisite locus standi to bring this suit cannot be gainsaid," the NUPL said.

"If the assailed law will be upheld, they will have to endure trial for a prohibited conduct of which they were not apprised, since they were neither committing any acts of terrorism nor were they part of a terrorist organization or association when they were arrested," the lawyers' group added.

Citing their experience, Gurung and Ramos argued that Section 4 of the law is "unconstitutional for being vague and overbroad" and violates their right to due process. Like the other petitioners, they want the law struck down.

According to the petition in intervention, the military claimed that they saw Gurung and Ramos firing at them during an encounter between state troops and the New People's Army in San Marcelino, Zambales, in August 2020.

The NUPL countered that the two are Aetas who fled the crossfire with their families. They were arrested by soldiers and accused of being NPA members at the house of Ramos' cousin, where they stopped by on their way to an evacuation center.

They said they and their families were tortured for six days.

"Grenades, ammunitions, and subversive documents were also planted in their possession," the NUPL said.

Gurung, they said, suffered even more.

"To extract a confession from him, the soldiers tied him up and repeatedly mauled him, placed him inside a sack and hung him upside down, suffocated him with a plastic bag and cigarette smoke over his head, and forced to eat his own feces," the lawyers said.

The two men were indicted for terrorism under Section 4(a) of the anti-terrorism law and illegal possession of firearms and explosives in September.

They are detained at an Olongapo jail and are now undergoing trial at the local court.

"They are now under threat of being imprisoned for life without the benefit of parole under a void and unconstitutional law," the NUPL said.  —KBK, GMA News

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