Bayan Muna seeks House probe of US role in Marawi siege | ABS-CBN

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Bayan Muna seeks House probe of US role in Marawi siege

Bayan Muna seeks House probe of US role in Marawi siege

RG Cruz,

ABS-CBN News

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Damaged buildings and houses are seen at the Moncado Colony village after intense fighting between government troops against insurgents from the Maute group, who has taken over large parts of the Marawi Tuesday. Romeo Ranoco, Reuters


MANILA - Bayan Muna party-list on Tuesday filed a resolution seeking a legislative inquiry into the involvement of US forces in ongoing military operations against terrorists holed up in Marawi City.

In House Resolution No. 1075, Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Carlos Zarate called on the chamber's foreign affairs and national defense committees to lead the investigation.

Bayan Muna has long been opposed to American intervention in the country's internal affairs.

Zarate noted that US Special Forces officers were seen in a conflict zone in Marawi City while American spy assets were reportedly used to fight Islamic State-linked extremists, about two weeks after the terrorists stormed the lakeside city and triggered a martial law declaration in the whole of Mindanao.

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The resolution said US Embassy Spokesperson Molly Koscina had confirmed Washington's involvement in the Marawi operations after a US surveillance plane was caught on video flying over Marawi City.

Koscina had said that US involvement was "at the request of the Philippines," Zarate noted in his resolution.

This, Zarate said, was contrary to the statement of President Rodrigo Duterte, who insisted Sunday that he did not know that the US military has been helping the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Duterte has several times vowed to pursue an independent foreign policy that would rely less on the Philippines' long-standing defense partnership with the US, a treaty ally.

"It is very alarming that the commander-in-chief himself does not know that his military and security officials like Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, National Security Adviser (NSA) Hermogenes Esperon, and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Eduardo Año have already asked assistance from a country that he has continually hit as a hypocrite and is only looking out for its own self-interest," the resolution read.

Zarate said Congress should "dig deeper into the role of the US government and its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) amid the reported activities and merger of their alleged covertly-created terror groups, the Abu Sayyaf and Maute groups, particularly its link to the US-supported Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)."

The terror groups, he said, "undermine regimes like the Duterte administration for the geopolitical and economic interests of the American government."

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