Exiled Philippine communist leader Jose Maria Sison yesterday demanded the EU remove him from its terrorist list after Dutch prosecutors dropped a murder investigation against him.
Sison said the decision on Tuesday by Dutch prosecutors to abandon a probe implicating him in political killings in the Philippines was “long overdue” and said the investigation was based on allegations by the Philippine military.
“I have always been confident that the case would eventually be dismissed because in the first place, I am innocent of the allegation,” Sison said in a statement from the Dutch city of Utrecht.
He was speaking after prosecutors said they would abandon the probe because of a lack of evidence.
Sison called on the Dutch government to “have my name removed from the terrorist list of the Council of the European Union” to compensate for what he called unspecified “injustices” he said he had suffered while seeking asylum.
Sison, 70, is the founder of the underground Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), which have been waging a Maoist rebellion since 1969.
He has been living in exile in the Netherlands since 1987, and in 2007 was arrested and accused by the Dutch authorities of ordering the killings of two former NPA commanders over ideological differences.
Peace talks between the Philippines and the CPP-NPA have been suspended since 2003, shortly after the EU placed the group as well as Sison’s name on its list of foreign terrorists.
Sison’s assets have been frozen and the Dutch authorities have also frozen his pension. Philippine authorities said the move had also resulted in a freeze on foreign funding to the rebel movement.
While the Dutch government has rejected his bid for asylum, it has not returned Sison to the Philippines because of threats to his life.
Meanwhile, NPA guerrillas continue to engage troops in deadly clashes and have also turned to extortion activities to keep the insurgency alive.
On Tuesday, NPA rebels attacked a police station in the southern city of Malaybalay, triggering a gun battle that left eight rebels, three pro-government militiamen and two civilians dead, the military said.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious