MANILA, the Philippines -- A military tribunal cleared 23 soldiers of murder charges Thursday in the 1987 slaying of 17 civilians, a case derided by some as the first major human rights violation under President Corazon Aquino.
Col. Mayo Domingo, president of the six-member tribunal, said there was a lack of sufficient evidence to convict the accused beyond a reasonable doubt in the Feb. 10, 1987, killings of seven women, five children and five men.
The military initially contended the 17 people were communist guerrillas who were slain in a military encounter in the hamlet of Namulandayan on the outskirts of Lupao town 90 miles north of Manila.
Survivors and human rights activists said the victims were innocent civilians.
Militant groups raised the incident as evidence of military repression under the government of Aquino, who took power in1986 following a popularly backed uprising that forced dictatorial President Ferdinand Marcos into exile.
But the tribunal upheld military accounts of the incident, including the claim the victims were either guerrillas of the 23,000-member New People's Army or civilians caught in the crossfire. It also dismissed charges the soldiers robbed the victims of their belongings.
The 23 accused soldiers broke into applause when the decision was read following 3 hours of deliberations.
In their summation, military prosecutors argued that the slayings were a reprisal for a guerrilla attack the previous day in a nearby hamlet in which the leader of an army patrol, 2nd Lt. Edgar Dizon, was killed.
'The fact that we are fighting the communists for 20 years does not give us the license to kill innocent civilians,' military prosecutor Maj. Victorio Tanbangkil said.
But civilian defense lawyer Tiberio Prado contended the soldiers were ambushed by guerrillas and that they did not know who was in the huts at which they were firing.
In the course of the yearlong trial, the names of four other soldiers were mentioned by witnesses as being among those who shot civilians. The court ordered an investigation of the four and said they should be tried if the evidence warrants.
Another military tribunal Thursday cleared Col. Eduardo 'Red' Kapunan and Maj. Nelson Eslao Thursday of charges of mutiny in the short-lived coup launched Aug. 28, 1987, by Col. Gregorio Honasan.
Kapunan and Eslao were accused of taking over the Philippine Military Academy in the mountain resort of Baguio and urging cadets to join Honasan's uprising, which killed 53 people and nearly toppled Aquino's fledgling administration.