Ally of Marcos Held in Deaths Escapes Prison

A former legislator and ally of deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos escaped from a suburban Manila prison where he had been held pending trial on multiple murder charges, the Defense Ministry said Friday.

Ministry spokesman Eddie Pangilinan said that Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile had ordered a “large-scale manhunt” for Orlando Dulay.

Pangilinan said he had no other details of Dulay’s escape, but the government’s television station said guards noticed Friday morning that Dulay was gone from his detention quarters at suburban Camp Crame. There was no indication where he had gone.

Dulay’s escape came a day after the Justice Ministry announced that it had filed kidnaping and murder charges against him in connection with the killing of three of President Corazon Aquino’s workers during her campaign for the Feb. 7 presidential election.

Gave Himself Up in March

Dulay, a former colonel, gave himself up March 12 after Enrile ordered his arrest on charges of killing Aquino’s campaign workers in Quirino province, 140 miles northeast of Manila.

Dulay denied any involvement in the killings, but the ministry said that one of Dulay’s bodyguards had signed a statement saying he saw the three victims--a father, his son, and another man--badly beaten and under guard in Dulay’s garage after they had been reported missing.

The three men disappeared on the eve of the election and their mutilated bodies were found later in an adjoining province.

Meanwhile, armed forces chief Gen. Fidel V. Ramos urged the Aquino government Friday to grant the same amnesty offered to Communist rebels to military personnel who violated human rights during Marcos’ 20-year regime.

Ramos told a gathering of Catholic bishops and businessmen in Manila that he welcomes investigations into the alleged torture, summary executions and other abuses by members of the armed forces to clear the military’s “good name, (which) is almost always being pilloried in the media.”

Urges Parallel Inquiries

But in a speech touching on areas of contention between President Aquino and the military, Ramos urged the government to carry out parallel investigations into rights abuses by the armed forces and Communist insurgents.

The government should wage “a double investigation of human rights violations,” and “there should also be a double kind of amnesty,” said Ramos, who, with Defense Minister Enrile, led a military revolt that ousted Marcos and installed Aquino on Feb. 25.

Presidential spokesman Rene Saguisag said the proposal for a “double amnesty” covering rebels and soldiers found guilty of civil rights abuses had been “floated” but had not been debated by Aquino’s Cabinet.

The mandate of Aquino’s newly appointed Human Rights Commission currently exempts from investigation rebels of the 16,000-strong New People’s Army, the armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines.