Peace Agreement Reached Between Philippines and the MILF

By Brian Lanciault

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

MANILA, Philippines– Representatives from the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on Saturday signed the final piece of the four annexes to the Framework Peace Agreement, completing a vital cornerstone to a more than decades-old peace process.

Philippines chief negotiator, Miriam Coronel Ferer, shake hands with Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chief negotiator, Mohagher Iqbal, as they exchange peace agreements between both parties at the GPH-MILF Formal Exploratory Talk in Kuala Lumpur. (Photo Courtesy of Reuters)

Representatives led by Presidential Peace Adviser Secretary Teresita Deles, government chief negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer and her counterpart in the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Mohagher Iqbal, met late in the afternoon Saturday and affixed their signatures to a several page document, the annex on normalization and addendum on Bangsamoro waters.  The resolution came at the end of four days of negotiation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

“Today the government and the MILF jointly signed the annex on normalization, the last of the four Annexes to the GPH-MILF Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB), which was completed on 15 October 2012. This paves the way for the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB). This is indeed a long-awaited moment that is a gift to our people at the start of a new year of renewed hope and commitment,” Deles said.

Earlier, negotiators from both sides signed the annexes regarding transitional arrangements and modalities, revenue generation and wealth and power sharing.

“Long live peace,” those witnessing the signing of the landmark document during the 43 exploratory talks in Malaysia cheered. Video footage of the event was streamed live across the nation.

Malaysian facilitator Datu Abdul Gaafar Tengku said: “I am very proud to be part of this process. I’ve witnessed in 1986 the People Power and now this.”

Malaysia has played the role of a third party facilitator of the talks since 2004.

Iqbal said the signing of the normalization annex had been an emotional matter.

“All these documents that we had signed are important, but the annex on normalization and addendum on Bangsamoro waters is vital because it is the last of the four annexes that completes the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro signed in October 2012,” he said.

Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda, who was in Kuala Lumpur to witness the event, said in his twitter post immediately after the signing of the last annex: “After more than a year of hard work, the peace panel in a moment of joy!”

A substantial portion on the annex on normalization includes the decommissioning of weapons from members of the MILF.

Coronel, during a video streamed press briefing, said the decommissioning and demobilization will be carried out in a multi-phase process.

“It will be gradual,” she said.

The MILF boasts some 12,000 fighters and the normalization process would involve the “decommissioning” of the firearms used by the rebels.  Provisions provide for  the absorption of a number of them into the police force of the yet to be created Bangsamoro.

With the completion of the four annexes, Coronel said negotiators can now proceed to crafting the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) in order to complete the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.

The BBL is set to be drafted by the Transition Commission which Iqbal also heads, but would also have to pass through a congressional vote, and would be subjected to a plebiscite in areas covered by the FAB.

The conflict in southern Philippines has cost the lives of an estimated 150,000 combatants and civilians over the last four decades.

For more information, please see:

The Australian– Philippines peace deal nears for Muslim south–26 January 2014

Gulf News– Philippines steps closer to Moro peace–25 January 2014

Inter Aksyon– Lacierda: Annex on Normalization signing is President Aquinoas defining moment–26 January 2014

The Wall Street Journal– Philippines, Rebel Group Step Closer to Peace–25 January 2014

Press Release: Council of Europe Calls on Russia to Cease Posthumous Case Against Magnitsky and the Persecution of Other Hermitage Lawyers

Press Release
For Immediate Distribution

 

23 January 2014 – A draft resolution entitled, “Refusing Impunity for theKillers of Sergei Magnitsky,” will be voted on next week by the ParliamentaryAssembly of the Council of Europe. The resolution calls on Russian authorities to stop the posthumous prosecution of Sergei Magnitsky, cease pressure on his family, and stop the persecution of other Hermitage lawyers, including barrister Eduard Khairetdinov, who represented the Hermitage Fund in Russia to defend against the $230 million fraud uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky.

The draft Magnitsky resolution says:

“The Assembly urges the competent Russian authorities…to close the posthumous trial against Mr Magnitsky and cease putting pressure on his mother and his widow to participate in these proceedings; to cease the persecution of other lawyers acting for the true owners of the fraudulently re-registered companies [of the Hermitage Fund].”(http://www.assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-DocDetails-EN.asp?fileid=20084&wrqid=0&wrqref=&ref=1&lang=EN)

Sergei Magnitsky was arrested shortly after he testified about the involvement of Russian officials in the theft of Hermitage Fund’s companies and of $230 million they had paid in taxes to the Russian government. The Russian officials also targeted all other lawyers who defended Hermitage against this fraud with criminal cases, searches and summonses. These actions by Russian authoritieshave been denounced in an earlier resolution adopted by the Council of Europe on 30 September 2009, a month and a half before Magnitsky’s killing in custody.

One of the persecuted lawyers is Eduard Khairetdinov, an independent barrister and former judge, who was responsible for filing the first complaint with Russian law enforcement bodies on behalf of the Hermitage Fund, three weeks before $230 million was stolen from the budget. The complaint sought to initiate an investigation and named Interior Ministry officers Karpov and Kuznetsov. Several months after the complaint was filed, Kuznetzov sought toopen a criminal case against barrister Khairetdinov himself.

The criminal case against barrister Khairetdinov in Russia claims that he acted on a false power of attorney because, according to the Russian Investigative Committee, the only people who could have given him a legitimate power of attorney were the people who stole the Hermitage companies. The case hasremained open for five years despite numerous appeals from associations of lawyers from around the world and the absurdity of the charges.

“The lawyers who acted on behalf of the true owners of the fraudulently re-registered companies [of the Hermitage Fund], in order to help them regain control, are now being prosecuted for acting on false power of attorney, as they had not obtained their powers from the false owners of the companies,” says the draft PACE Resolution on the plight of lawyers whose only misfortune was to represent the “wrong” client.

Sergei Magnitsky spoke in defence of his colleagues from custody. In his last written statement prepared for the court, he said:

“Investigator [of the Interior Ministry] Silchenko does not wish to identify other persons who made this [$230 million] fraud possible [other than a sawmill employee Victor Markelov]; he wishes instead that the lawyers for the Hermitage Fund who strived and continue to strive for the investigation of this case are forced to leave the country, or like me, are kept in custody.”(http://russian-untouchables.com/docs/D85-zayavlenie-magnitskogo-o-politmotivirovannosti-12-11-2009.pdf)

Earlier this month, barrister Khairetdinov filed several complaints against his unlawful prosecution, seeking the case to be closed because it is unlawful and based on false grounds. Information on the outcome of his complaints is not yet available.

For further information, please see:

Law and Order in Russia

Council of Europe Report Denounces Russian Persecution of Hermitage Partner as “Not Bona Fide Pursuit of Criminal Justice”

Press Release
For Immediate Distribution

 

 24 January 2014 – In its new report on the Magnitsky case, the Council of Europe Rapporteur has criticized the case opened by the Russian Interior Ministry against Hermitage Capital partner, Ivan Cherkasov, saying it was not a “bona fide pursuit of criminal justice.”

The criminal case against Mr Cherkasov was used as a pretext to search offices of Hermitage Capital and its law firm in Moscow, Firestone Duncan, and tounlawfully seize documents for the Hermitage Fund’s companies, which were then used to fraudulently re-register those companies into the names of previously convicted criminals. The criminals then fraudulently applied for $230 million of taxes that Hermitage Fund’s companies had paid in Russia.

Following the Council of Europe investigation, the Rapporteur, Swiss MP Andreas Gross, concluded that the case against Kameya was not a bona fide investigation.

“I conclude that the criminal case must have been opened for other reasons than the bona fide pursuit of criminal justice. One of the real reasons might well have been to justify the two “raids” on the offices of Firestone Duncan and Hermitage, during which items were taken by the investigators, which, as it is alleged, were later used in the commission of the tax reimbursement fraud denounced by Sergei Magnitsky,” says Council of Europe Rapporteur in his report.

The case alleged tax underpayment by Kameya, of which Cherkasov was general director, in spite of fact that the companies had received clean tax audits from the Russian Federal Tax Service. Sergei Magnitsky in his testimony stressed that the case against Kameya was fabricated by the Interior Ministry officers in order to commit fraud against Hermitage.

The Interior Ministry officers who were in charge of the Kameya case, Karpov and Silchenko, have been sanctioned for their role in the Magnitsky case by the U.S. government.

All appeals to close the case for the lack of evidence of any crime have been rejected by the Interior Ministry in spite of definitive conclusions by the tax bodies that all taxes had been paid in full and correctly.

Recently, Hermitage lawyers learned that the Interior Ministry appointed an expert to find evidence for continuing the case. The expert concluded that there was no basis, but his conclusions have been kept secret from Hermitagelawyers for three months. A complaint has now been filed by Hermitage lawyers against the Interior Ministry to compel them to close the Kameya case as groundless and unlawful.

For more information, please see:

Law and Order in Russia

Report “Refusing Impunity for the Killers of Sergei Magnitsky