UNLESS AMENDED AND REFINED, ANTI-TERRORISM BILL
POSES GREAT DANGER TO CIVIL LIBERTIES

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Nene Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today underscored anew the importance of refining the Anti-Terrorism Bill and ridding it of infirmities before it is approved by Congress so that it will not unduly deprive the people of their constitutional rights and endanger their lives.

Pimentel has proposed 88 amendments to the controversial legislation (Senate Bill 2137) a good number of which has already been accepted by the bills sponsor, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile.

Among the accepted amendments are the reduction of the number of days that terrorist suspects can be detained without court warrants and formal criminal charges from 15 to 3 days and dismissal of all charges against the accused if the charge of terrorism is not proven.

Another amendment adopted by the bills sponsor is the payment of indemnity to a person who was acquitted of terrorism to the tune of not less than P50,000 for every day that he or she had been detained or arrested without a warrant.

Unless the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act is refined, and the necessary safeguards tucked into the measure, Pimentel warned that it can be used as a tool for state terrorism against the people.

We need the help of the people and of our colleagues in the Senate to rid the Bill of its impurities so that we may secure the country against the scourge of terrorism but without sacrificing our peoples basic liberties and fundamental freedom, he said.

Like Draco, the 7th century Athenian lawgiver, who prescribed tough punishments even for civil debts, Pimentel said Senate Bill 2137 treats with equal severity a person who is a mere suspect in the crime of terrorism and another who is actually accused or convicted of the crime.

Citing one of the major flaws of the bill, the minority leader said it allows some unnamed persons or anonymous informers to tag others as participants or plotters of the crime of terrorism.

The bill, he said, does not require that the identity of the informer be revealed to and be recorded by the law enforcement authorities.

Pimentel said neither does the bill require that the competence of the informer as a reliable source of information be first established before the authorities use the full force of the law to roll over the suspect.

In fine, the bill grants the informer a virtually boundless power to cause injury to others by the simple expedient of labeling them as suspects of the crime of terrorism without incurring any responsibility for it.

Pimentel pinpointed four sections of the Anti-Terrorism Bill that severely undermine the constitutional guarantees in the Bill of Rights. These are:

1. Authorizing the surveillance, interception and recording of communications, conversations, messages of persons suspected of terrorism.

2. Allowing the arrest without judicial warrant and the subsequent detention of any person suspected of the crime of terrorism.

3. Empowering the police or law enforcement officials, by order of the Court of Appeals, to examine the deposits, placements, trust accounts and records of a person suspected of terrorism.

4. Authorizing the seizure and sequestration of the bank deposits, placements, trust accounts, assets and records of a suspect of the crime of terrorism.

Pimentel said the bill also sanctions the seizures and sequestrations of the suspects moneys, businesses, transportation and communications equipment and other implements and properties of whatever kind and nature even if he or she is not yet convicted of the crime of terrorism.

He said such seizure and sequestration of funds other assets can be done even if a person is not even accused of terrorism but a mere suspect.

According to the minority leader, the bill in effect legitimizes the police surveillance of the movements of the suspects of the crime, the surreptitious search of their homes, offices and places of leisure and the electronic recording of their communications by methods that include such advanced technology as magic lanterns, trade and trap and other devices.

The net effect of these activities whether done together or separately is to deprive even a suspect in terrorist cases of his or her liberty and property without due process. And that makes the bill patently defective, clearly impermissible and fatally flawed for being violative of the Constitution, Pimentel said.