Coup Leader’s Brother Held in Philippines : Manila Raid Nets Arsenal; Honasan Vows to Fight On

Police arrested a brother of fugitive coup leader Col. Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan and seized an arsenal of Philippine army weapons in a building reportedly owned by opposition leader Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, authorities said Friday.

Honasan said in a taped message released Friday that he had no intention of hurting President Corazon Aquino or her family in last week’s coup but that he intends to fight on against her government.

Metro Manila Gov. Jejomar Binay, who took part in the raid, said the building was owned by a holding company controlled by Enrile, a former defense minister and one-time mentor of the young officers who led last week’s bloody coup attempt. The weapons, which included M-16 automatic rifles, grenade launchers and a bazooka, were in crates marked as the property of armed forces headquarters at Camp Aguinaldo.

53 Dead in Coup Attempt

In a separate raid hours earlier, police arrested Don Honasan, younger brother of Gregorio Honasan, who has been on the run with up to 3,000 armed followers since the failure of the Aug. 28 coup that left 53 people dead.

Police said the younger Honasan was arrested at his home in the Manila suburb of Marikina about 6 a.m. and charged with illegal possession of firearms. In that raid, police confiscated an M-16 rifle, a .45-caliber pistol, a .357 magnum revolver, two .22-caliber pistols and assorted ammunition. Honasan was ordered held without bail.

Raid in Business District

The second raid, on a building in the fashionable Makati business district, netted several crates of Israeli-made Galil rifles, U.S.-made M-16 rifles, M-203 rifles with sniper scopes, boxes of grenades and land mines, a bazooka and two crates of ammunition, police said.

The Makati building includes among its offices Sigma Security Systems, identified by two sources close to Enrile as property of JAKA holding company. Another source said a brother of Col. Honasan is one of JAKA’s shareholders.

Enrile, the nation’s wealthiest senator, listed JAKA among his properties in a declaration of assets when he joined the Senate last month.

Binay said the building “is owned by JAKA, who are Jackie and Katrina, the children of Juan Ponce Enrile.”

Helped Oust Marcos

Enrile, defense minister under ousted ruler Ferdinand E. Marcos, helped swing the military behind Aquino in the February, 1986, uprising that drove Marcos from power. He was later fired from the Cabinet when Col. Honasan and other former aides were implicated in a coup attempt last November.

Honasan said in a 15-minute taped message that the Aquino government is well on its way to duplicating the excesses of the Marcos regime.

“This we cannot allow, and we shall not allow,” he said on the audiotape, apparently intended for radio and television in the Philippines and obtained by the San Francisco Examiner.

Honasan called the deaths and injuries “regrettable and inexcusable,” but he justified the coup attempt as “an initial, necessary step to set a new direction for our country and people.”

Tried to Cut Casualties

Honasan said his men hesitated to fight the attacking government forces inside Camp Aguinaldo and Villamor air base because they wanted to minimize casualties.

“We had the necessary trained personnel and the military equipment to undertake the necessary mopping-up operations,” he said, “but we held back our punches. It may have been a fatal tactical error on our part, but it was a gamble we were prepared to take to save more lives.”

In a speech Friday to about 400 soldiers at Camp Aguinaldo, Aquino said her government had asked Congress to increase the defense budget beyond her earlier recommendations and urged a return to “military professionalism, which was violated here.”

The mutineers alleged that her government was soft on communism and ignored the military’s needs.