6 Marines join Magdalo leaders in detention

Scrapping plans to transfer them to Cavite, the Armed Forces transferred six Marine officers linked to a failed coup last February to a detention center with members of the mutinous Magdalo group. Navy spokesman Commander Giovanni Bacordo said Marine Colonels Ariel Querubin, Orlando de Leon, Januario Caringal and Lieutenant Colonels, Armando Bañez, Custodio Parcon and Achilles Segumalian were taken to the Philippine Marine Corps detention center in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City. The six officers had been staying at the Bonifacio Naval Station (BNS) also inside Fort Bonifacio along with seven other Marine officers. Bacordo said the transfer was "completed without incident at 9 p.m. Wednesday. The transfer to the naval base in Cavite didn't push through." They now join four members of Magdalo group, namely Navy Lieutenants (senior grade) Antonio Trillanes IV and James Layug, as well as Marine Captains Nicanor Faeldon and Gary Alejano. The military earlier claimed receiving information that Querubin and his colleagues would be bolted out of the Marine headquarters. Bacordo did not say why they were not taken to Cavite. Military chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon earlier gave instructions to detain the six at the Naval Base Cavite Custodial Center in Fort San Felipe in Cavite City. The Armed Forces leadership tagged them as part of the military faction which joined a purported "grand conspiracy" to oust President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the botched uprising last February 24. The Magdalo sparked the short-lived takeover of the posh Oakwood Premier Suites at the Makati business district on July 27, 2003. Its members were also implicated in the February coup, as well as a purported plot to bomb the Batasan Pambansa last July.-GMANews.TV