NPA punishes Colonel Aguinaldo
Former Col. Rodolfo Aguinaldo was meted revolutionary justice on June 12 right in front of his house in Tuguegarao City. Aguinaldo, who was known as the country's top torturer and called the "vulture of Cagayan" because of his notoriety as a fascist and counterrevolutionary, was punished by a team from the Fortunato Camus Command (FCC) of the NPA-Cagayan.
In its statement, the FCC said that Aguinaldo's victims had long been crying out for justice. He was punished for his long list of crimes against the people and the revolutionary movement, including the salvaging, torture and abuse of captured cadres and activists, the rape of wives and female relatives of suspected Red fighters, the forced evacuation, mass arrest and harassment of supporters of the revolutionary movement. He was also involved in smuggling drugs, logs and people and in electoral terrorism and fraud.
Aguinaldo's many heinous crimes have been recorded in publications of Amnesty International, Task Force Detainees (TFD), SELDA, in a class suit filed by political prisoners against him and the late Gen. Fabian Ver and other AFP officials in 1985, in another class suit won by SELDA in Hawaii against the Marcos dictatorship, and in many other documents. In a TFD report in 1980, Aguinaldo was described as a "persistent and systematic torturer" and his "legendary maniacal torture sessions.left many detainees permenently injured". Said the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Aguinaldo's killing was "a commentary on the failure of the justice system". According to CBCP president, Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato, the Aquino and Ramos regimes never seriously pursued charges against military officers accused of human rights violations. And this is why it is with the NPA that the people pin their hopes to mete the punishment that the country's justice system has failed to implement.
Aguinaldo was a member of Philippine Military Academy Class '72. In the first years of martial law, he was part of the notorious 5th Constabulary Security Unit. He became PC Provincial Commander of Cagayan in the first part of the 1980s. As provincial commander, he enforced a series of suppressive military campaigns, including "Oplan North Star". He was also among those who launched a coup d'etat against the Aquino regime in 1987 and 1989.
Through massive terrorism and fraud, he became Cagayan governor from 1988 to 1998, and congressman of the province's third district from 1998 until his defeat in the May 14 elections. His terms as governor and congressman were highlighted by charges of graft filed against him.
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