The World Waits : A Look at Police Deployment

More than a score of military men, including the armed forces chief of staff, now stand charged in the Philippines with involvement in the assassination of political opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. These accusations, equivalent to indictments, must next be considered by a special tribunal that was organized by President Ferdinand E. Marcos specifically to try cases against government officials. The degree of independence that this body will demonstrate thus can’t be predicted. But, whatever occurs, at least one essential fact has been established. This is that the government’s own investigation into the Aquino killing was a sham, intended not to reveal the truth but to hide it, carried out not to expose the guilty but to shield them.

That much was made clear when the independent board of inquiry known as the Agrava Commission three months ago issued its report on what happened at Manila Airport on Aug. 21, 1983. It has been made even clearer now in the charges brought by a board of prosecutors who considered the commission’s findings. Seventeen men, among them two generals, are charged with “evident premeditation and treachery” in planning and carrying out the Aquino murder. Nine others, including Gen. Fabian Ver, the chief of staff and a confidant of Marcos, are accused of attempting to cover up the crime.

The government’s version of the Aquino killing was unbelievable from the beginning. It held that a lone gunman in the pay of communist insurgents was somehow able to penetrate the 1,200-man security cordon around the airport, get to within a few feet of Aquino and fire a fatal shot into his head before himself being gunned down by nearby guards. The Agrava Commission easily enough established that Aquino could have been killed only by government agents who took him from the airliner that had brought him back from exile in the United States. The only questions then and now were who gave the order for the assassination and who had a hand in protecting the conspirators. Formal accusations in response to these questions have been made. Now Filipinos and the world wait to see whether justice will in fact be done.