vmg: US soldiers in the Philippines

Sunday, March 14, 2010

CHR, groups still baffled by death of Filipino interpreter for US troops

ILIGAN CITY (MindaNews / March 12) - The death of an interpreter for American soldiers in Marawi City has continued to baffle government and private human rights organizations even after they wrapped up a probe mission early this month.

Florante Ursua, special investigator of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) office in Iligan City, who joined 100 human rights advocates from the Zamboanga peninsula in their March 3 visit in Camp Ranao in Marawi City, said the outcome of the investigation was inconclusive because “some serious questions raised were not completely answered and the US soldiers asserted that the case was plain suicide while officers of the 103rd Infantry Brigade said that they were innocent and that they did not know that someone was hired as interpreter of the US forces until his death.”

He said members of the fact-finding mission “strategically” divided themselves into three groups and conducted simultaneous investigation: one group interviewed the police in Marawi, the other at Camp Ranao with 103rd Infantry Brigade officials, and the third with US troops stationed inside Camp Ranao.

“We were accommodated well but only the officials of the fact finding were allowed to talk with the military officers while the rest were kept at bay outside the camp,” Ursua told MindaNews.

In a blog by a group called Kodao Productions, the fact-finding team reported that “they had a brief talk with Col. Felix Castro, the deputy commander of 103rd brigade and US Army Capt. Mike Kaye of who both claimed they were innocent of the incident.”

The team also reported that they were denied access to the place of incident.

When they asked Col. Castro about Cardeno and the absence of an official report about the incident inside the Philippine Army camp, they were told that “Cardeño died under unidentified circumstances".

[More at MindaNews]