Angara: GMA ordered gag on mutiny leaders

Opposition Sen. Edgardo Angara accused President Arroyo yesterday of ordering a gag on Navy Lt. Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes IV and other leaders of the July 27 failed coup attempt.

He said Mrs. Arroyo directed military leaders not to bring Trillanes and his group to the Senate and House inquiries on the mutiny.

She even called pro-administration senators to try to abort last Friday’s initial hearing of the Senate, and when his allies failed to do that, she asked them to block any attempt to depict the mutineers as heroes, he said.

He noted that while senators were conducting the hearing, the President appealed to the public not to "glamorize" Trillanes and his colleagues.

Angara said he could not understand why Mrs. Arroyo has been desperately trying to prevent the mutiny leaders from speaking their minds and airing their grievances in congressional hearings.

"If the mutiny is indeed over as the President claims, she has nothing to fear. We should hear these young officers and help the government attend to their concerns," he added.

The Armed Forces leadership refused to bring Trillanes and his group to last week’s Senate and House hearings for "security reasons."

On Thursday morning, Armed Forces chief Lt. Gen. Narciso Abaya told the House defense committee that they were trying to protect the leaders of the mutiny from their colleagues who have not been accounted for and who might try to assassinate them to prevent them from speaking up.

Unknown to committee members, the mutiny leaders were already on their way to the Batasan area in Quezon City and were in the vicinity of Tandang Sora when Abaya ordered them back to Camp Aguinaldo.

They came to know about it on Friday when Angara and opposition colleague Teresa Aquino-Oreta uncovered such fact in the course of the Senate hearing.

Abaya at first denied that the detained mutiny leaders had ever left Camp Aguinaldo. But under intense questioning by Angara and Oreta, he admitted that they were transported in a mini-bus without his knowledge.

He said they were only three kilometers away from the Batasan when he ordered them back.

Angara noted that the distance between Tandang Sora and Batasan is shorter than the length of road the mutiny leaders traveled in returning to Camp Aguinaldo.

Abaya blamed a certain Col. Quevedo who he said took his instruction from Brig. Gen. Carlito Gamit, the Armed Forces liaison to the Senate and the House.

He said Gamit thought that he had cleared the attendance of the leaders of the failed coup to the congressional hearings.