ZAMBOANGA CITY: A commander of the Philippine Army's elite Special Forces, who went missing last week after a firefight with communist rebels, is being held captive in Mindanao, a rebel spokesman said yesterday.
Rigoberto Sanchez, an NPA spokesman, said rebel forces are holding 1Lt. Vicente P. Cammayo, commander of the 11th Special Forces Company.
"He was taken as an NPA prisoner of war," Sanchez said, adding, the Alejandro Lanaja Command is holding Camayo captive.
Cammayo's group clashed with rebels on Nov. 7 in Compostela Valley's Monkayo town that left two army soldiers and a government militiaman dead in the village of Casoon.
Sanchez warned any rescue attempt would put Cammayo's life in peril.
"The only cause of POW Cammayo's safety being imperiled emanates from the 10th Infantry Division's futile attempt to mount a rescue operation," he said.
He said Cammayo is being interrogated for possible human rights violations and other crimes related to operations of the Special Forces in the area.
Sanchez said Cammayo's rights as prisoner of war are being respected by rebels.
"His rights as a POW under Protocol II of the Geneva Convention are guaranteed," he said. "We assure family that he is well and is adapting to the guerrilla conditions of his captivity."
The rebels also seized an M60 machine gun and two M16 and one M14 automatic rifles from Cammayo's unit during the fighting.
Aris Francisco, spokesman of the NPA's Alejandro Lanaja Command, accused the 3rd Special Forces Battalion to which Cammayo's unit belongs, as responsible for the series of violations of human rights, protocols of war and international humanitarian law in Compostela Valley province.
Francisco said the Special Forces masterminded the June bombing in Nabunturan town that wounded several innocent civilians.
The NPA also tagged Special Forces members as behind the brutal murder in June of peasant leader Noli Llanos in Nabunturan's Mipangi village, where rebels killed three government soldiers; and also the killing of farmer Diego Encarnacion in the village of Linda in Nabunturan town in July. Both farmers were accused by the military as NPA supporters.
The NPA, armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines, has been waging since the late 1960s Asia’s longest-running Maoist insurgency.
