Press Release
January 30, 2007

NO NEED TO RUSH PASSAGE OF ANTI-TERRORISM ACT
BEFORE MAY ELECTIONS

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Nene Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said United States President George Bushs profuse commendation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the gains in the governments crackdown on terrorism indicates this campaign can be successfully pursued even without an Anti-Terrorism Act.

Pimentel said practically all the criminal offenses enumerated in the propose Anti-Terrorism Act such as arson, kidnapping, hijacking and murder are already punishable under the Revised Penal Code and enacting a new law would be a redundancy. This is also bound to cause confusion among law enforcement officers and other members of the criminal justice system.

Now that President Bush has praised Mrs. Arroyos fight versus terrorism as a tremendous success even without an Anti-Terrorism Law. There is no need to rush the passage of the bill, especially before the next elections, he said.

The minority leader has described the Anti-Terrorism legislation, embodied under Senate Bill 2137, as the most terrifying piece of legislation ever submitted for the consideration of the Senate.

Pimentel has proposed 88 amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Bill sponsored by Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile in order to prevent violations of human rights by law enforcers. Enrile has accepted about 70 of these amendments.

One of the amendments already incorporated in the bill is the reduction of the number of days that terror suspects can be detained without court warrants and formal criminal charges from 15 days to only three days.

Another major amendments already adopted by the Senate is the indemnification of a person who was erroneously accused of committing terrorist acts to the tune of not less than P50,000 for every day of his detention without court warrant.

Unless the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act is refined and the necessary safeguards against abuse of human rights are instituted, Pimentel warned that it can be used as a tool for state terrorism against the people.

We need the help of the people and 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 freedoms, he said.

Citing one of the infirmities of the bill, Pimentel 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 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 and 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.

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