CPP Information Bureau
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today congratulated its founding chair and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) senior political consultant Jose Ma. Sison for gaining decisive legal victory yesterday with the dropping of murder charges filed against him in 2007 by Dutch prosecutors.
"The CPP and the Filipino people join Comrade Sison in celebrating this victory. This culminates a series of legal triumphs in Comrade Sison’s struggle against the collusion of imperialists, the Philippine puppet regime and counterrevolutionary traitors to prosecute and persecute him using trumped-up charges," said the CPP in a statement released by its Information Bureau.
In 2007, murder charges were filed against Sison for the deaths of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara who were killed while resisting arrest by the New People’s Army (NPA) in 2003 and 2004 respectively. Both had been charged with counterrevolutionary and criminal offenses and ordered by revolutionary people’s courts in the Philippines to be arrested and face trial.
Sison was arrested in August 28 and incarcerated for 17 days by the Dutch police. He was ordered released by The Hague District Court for "lack of hard evidence." The Court of Appeals upheld this decision in October 2007. In November 2007, the public prosecutor’s office initially closed the preliminary investigation against Sison but later decided to continue pursuing the case. In June 2008, the district court determined that the prosecution still had no evidence, and gave it time to wrap up the case. The Dutch national prosecution office formally informed Sison yesterday that it had finally dropped the case due to "insufficient legal and convincing evidence."
"All this confirms that the charges filed against Comrade Sison were false from the very start and were only cooked up by the Arroyo regime through its Inter-Agency Legal Advisory Group (IALAG) with the instigation and support of US security agencies and joined in by the Dutch police." added the CPP.
"There will be no letup, however, in Comrade Sison’s struggle against continued efforts of the imperialists and the Philippine puppet reactionaries to persecute and stifle him," said the CPP. It pointed out to "other fascist and ‘legal’ instruments, including the sinister US and European Union’s ‘terrorist’ tag on Comrade Sison as well as the CPP and the NPA."
"The US imperialists and their local puppets worry greatly that Comrade Sison continues to powerfully inspire the Filipino people in waging revolution against the reactionary puppet oppressive and exploitative system in the Philippines and actively contribute to the advance of the proletarian revolution and anti-imperialist struggle in the world," said the CPP.
