Philippine police seek Interpol help to arrest Communist leaders

PHILIPPINES: The Philippines has asked Interpol to issue arrest warrants for the leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines and party officials wanted on murder charges, a senior police official said Sunday.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) is seeking International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) "red notices" for Jose Maria Sison, Luis Jalandoni and others for multiple murder, the PNP said in a statement.

Sison is the founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its military wing, the New People's Army (NPA). Jalandoni is head of the National Democratic Front (NDF).

"An Interpol red notice is the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant in use today," PNP head general Oscar Calderon said in the statement. "The same notice is also being sought for other co-respondents of Sison who may have fled abroad and who are also the subject of the warrant of arrest issued by the courts," Calderon said.

Sison, Jalandoni and Bayan Muna congressman Satur Ocampo, are among 53 persons issued with arrest warrants for multiple murder last week by the regional trial court in Leyte.

The accused were indicted on 15 counts of murder allegedly committed during the infamous purge of suspected "spies and counter-revolutionaries" within the CPP/NPA from 1985 to 1991.

The remains of the 15 murder victims were among 67 bodies exhumed by forensic investigators from the NPA "killing fields" in Leyte on August 26, 2006.

"Interpol's role is to assist the PNP in identifying or locating these persons with a view to their arrest or deportation," the PNP chief said.

Sison and Jalandoni are in Europe where they have established a remote command centre from where they continue to direct the activities of the communist New People's Army, and its armed and legal fronts in the Philippines, the statement said.

The CPP and its 7,000-member NPA has been waging a nearly 40-year Maoist guerrilla campaign against successive Philippine governments. President Gloria Arroyo suspended peace talks with the group in 2003, concluding that the rebels were not interested in a political settlement.

Arroyo has said she intends to break the CPP within the next five years.

Manila, Monday, AFP