32 arrested in Bacolod raids released

BACOLOD CITY: THIRTY-TWO of the 57 persons arrested and detained by authorities for alleged links to the communist movement were released on Wednesday after the Bacolod City Prosecutor’s Office found no sufficient basis to indict them.

Assistant City Prosecutor Fernand Castro ordered their release at the Negros Occidental Provincial Police Office where they have been detained for six days.

Of those released, 21 were former workers of Vallacar Transit Inc. and 11 were members of the cultural group Teatro Obrero.

Capt. Cenon Pancito 3rd, spokesman of the Philippine Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, said the presence of these individuals at the premises of the militant groups offices was only “incidental,” and they have not committed any violation.

The police and the military earlier claimed to have recovered assorted firearms, grenades, bladed weapons and ammunition from the raided offices.

The release left only 11 persons in detention facing criminal prosecution.

The military claimed the offices of the organizations that were raided were training facilities for “child warriors.”

But the organizations denied the accusation and insisted the guns and explosives supposedly seized had been planted.

Joemax Ortiz, counsel for the laid off workers, slammed authorities for arresting and forcing them to “go through the inconvenience of proving their innocence” when “they should have been released then and there because they were clearly innocent.”