Aquino Begins Release of Political Prisoners : 9 Freed; Hundreds More Jailed for Opposing Marcos Will Get Out Soon, Spokesman Says

Nine political prisoners were released Thursday in the first step toward fulfilling Philippine President Corazon Aquino’s campaign pledge to free those jailed for political crimes under deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

On her second day in office, Aquino, 53, ordered that 39 prisoners be released. In her campaign leading up to the Feb. 7 presidential election, she had repeatedly promised a sweeping amnesty program for the more than 450 people--students, lawyers and artists--whose opposition to Marcos has kept them in prison for as long as six years.

“These detainees are the first of hundreds who will be released in the next few days,” presidential spokesman Rene Saguisag said. “President Aquino, having been the wife of a detainee, knows only too well how the family of a political prisoner suffers.”

Husband Jailed 7 1/2 Years

Aquino’s husband, opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., spent 7 1/2 years in prison for speaking out against the Marcos regime. He was killed in August, 1983, as he returned from exile in the United States, an assassination that his widow blames on Marcos.

President Aquino spent nearly an hour Thursday afternoon with special U.S. envoy Philip C. Habib, who congratulated her on her victory on behalf of President Reagan and the American people.

According to a statement that Aquino issued after the meeting, Habib told her that Reagan has “the highest hopes and the best wishes for the success” of her government and said that the Filipinos have “moved the American people and those in the highest circles of the U.S. government with images of nuns kneeling in the path of onrushing tanks”--a reference to the three-day civilian and military rebellion that toppled Marcos on Tuesday.

In briefings Thursday, however, the two men who had led the mutiny that had helped bring Aquino to power made it clear that they thought that the victory was incomplete.

Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and armed forces Chief of Staff Gen. Fidel V. Ramos described a series of measures aimed at capturing potential enemies of the new government and their secret caches of arms and money.

All military bases in and around Manila have been placed on a condition of “red alert.” By 3 p.m., guards were blocking all unauthorized visitors from Manila’s major military installations and searching every car allowed to enter.

All private planes were banned from leaving Manila International Airport, where many wealthy Filipinos keep private aircraft with the range to reach Hong Kong, Malaysia or Guam.

Two battalions of soldiers and airport security men searched every international airliner before departure. Passenger lists were being screened for the names of former Marcos officials and other loyalists who have criminal cases pending against them.

The mopping-up operation extended even to the defense ministry. On Wednesday, military police discovered 16 M-16 rifles in three cars parked outside Enrile’s office. The cars were owned by a Marcos loyalist, Rodolfo Farinas, who was arrested and interrogated on suspicion of plotting to kill Enrile and Aquino. Investigators have not yet determined whether there actually was such a plot.

Described as ‘Henchman’

Farinas, 32, the powerful mayor of the capital of Marcos’ home province of Ilocos del Norte, is a close friend of Marcos’ son, Ferdinand Jr., and sources in the province have referred to him as a “henchman of the regime.” Nine men described as his aides and bodyguards were arrested with him.

Enrile and Ramos also said they have placed under house arrest several generals and colonels who held out against the rebel forces until the end, and they have targeted several other heavily armed Marcos supporters who are known to have remained in the country after the Marcos family and friends fled first to Guam, then to Honolulu on two U.S. Air Force jets.

In another government action, Aquino’s executive secretary, Joker Arroyo, ordered heads of government offices to preserve all records and make inventories of their assets and finances.

A government announcement said he issued the directive in response to reports of “deliberate destruction and pilferage” of records at several ministries and agencies. Among them were Human Settlements, a heavily funded ministry headed by Imelda Marcos, the former president’s wife; the Government Corporate Counsel, and a gambling regulatory board.

The two military chiefs issued a blanket guarantee that all Filipinos who have been in exile from the Marcos regime will be welcomed back under the new government, even if old charges are still pending against them.

‘Everyone Can Come Home’

“They were very explicit,” spokesman Saguisag said after a three-hour meeting with Enrile and Ramos. “Everyone can come home. No one will be arrested.”

In the meeting, the three officials and two human rights lawyers scanned lists of the men, women and teen-agers whom Marcos had jailed--many of them without trial--for their political beliefs in the course of his two decades in power.

Enrile, a former Marcos cabinet minister who said he rebelled Saturday in “an act of contrition,” had served as martial law administrator and was responsible for carrying out the president’s detention orders from 1972 to 1981, when, many say, martial law ended only in name.

On Thursday, though, “Minister Enrile and Gen. Ramos always kept stressing they are only there to implement the will of the civilian government,” said Saguisag. At a press conference, Ramos repeatedly referred to Aquino as “my commander in chief,” as if to emphasize his subordination to civilian rule.

Rejoicing at Camp

At 6 p.m., there were scenes of tears and rejoicing at Camp Bagong Diwa, a military detention center 10 miles south of Manila, as the first of the 39 prisoners were freed and families were reunited after many years.

“The message to me in particular is that the new government recognizes that I’m not a criminal,” said Reynaldo Maclang, who served six years on what he called trumped-up charges of rebellion and plotting to assassinate Marcos. “The message to the world is that our dignity as Filipinos is being returned to us.”

Trade union leader Danilo Garcia, arrested in a crackdown last July 22 on the militant labor group called May 1st Movement, slapped himself several times.

“It’s too good to be true. I must be dreaming,” Garcia said.

The release of others among the 39 prisoners was slowed by the fact that each release had to be signed by several people in different locations, officials reported.

Aquino Criticized

During Aquino’s first official presidential press conference on Wednesday, she came under sharp criticism on the prisoners issue from Filipino reporters, many of whom were targets of Marcos’ detention decrees. They suggested that she was not moving fast enough to fulfill her promise.

Even on Thursday, as the first prisoners were set free, panelists on one of the main television stations openly criticized Aquino for dragging her feet.

Noting that hundreds of innocent people remain behind bars, one panelist from a group called the Task Force Detainees said, “We are distressed about this because President Aquino promised on many occasions that if she became president this is the first act she would do. There is foot-dragging in this affair . . . and if this does not improve, people’s power will again be put into play”--a reference to the massing of civilian protesters during the military rebellion.

Some ‘Real Criminals’

Saguisag said the military showed “very strong resistance” to releasing some prisoners. He did not name the prisoners in question, but they presumably include Jose Maria Sison, former chairman of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines, and Bernabe Buscayno, commander of the party’s military arm, the New People’s Army. Both were captured in 1977.

But he vowed that the screening and pardoning process for most of the prisoners will be finished by week’s end, adding that there still may be “between 10 and 100” that are found to be real criminals.

Saguisag said he and other members of Aquino’s inner circle are confident that the political prisoner issue will be resolved in time.

“If you can oust the biggest warlord in the world, then everything else is peanuts,” he said.