Word: aquinos
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There was not an empty seat in the room as the five-member commission assigned to investigate the assassination of Opposition Leader Benigno Aquino opened its first meeting in 24 days. The audience was particularly interested because General Prospero Olivas, Commander of the National Police for Metropolitan Manila, would present the military's official version of the events that led to Aquino's murder seconds after he stepped off a plane at Manila International Airport on Aug. 21. Instead, there was yet another surprise in the brief but checkered history of a commission whose credibility has been assailed...
Although General Olivas' testimony was locked into a vault along with the commission's other documents, it was quickly leaked to the press. He reiterated the government's claim that Aquino had been killed by a Communist hitman who had somehow managed to penetrate the airport's tight security. But politicians and diplomats who analyzed the report found glaring contradictions between that claim and the photos and videotape footage of the seconds just before and after the shooting, which have been widely circulated in the Philippines...
According to Olivas, the five khaki-uniformed guards who met Aquino aboard China Airlines Flight 811 were unarmed. As Aquino stepped off the plane, escorted by the guards, a single fatal bullet entered the nape of his neck and passed in a downward path through his chin. Seconds later, soldiers gunned down Rolando Galman, who, Olivas contended, had "suddenly darted toward [Aquino] and shot him from behind...
...specter of the bruised and bloody body of Benigno Aquino would not go away. At every turn last week, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos appeared to be moving through a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions welling up from the assassination of his chief political rival. President Reagan canceled his plans to visit the Philippines, and the estranged Philippine business community was only reluctantly taking steps to help Marcos out of a gathering financial crisis, which last week led to a 21.4% devaluation of the peso. From a former U.S. Ambassador to both Iran and the Philippines, meanwhile, came a blunt warning that...
...from reluctant Philippine businessmen, at one point reportedly threatening, "If things get messy around here and there is hyperinflation, you might see happening here what happened in Mexico and Argentina-nationalization of the banks." He did agree to add independent members to the six-man, pro-government commission investigating Aquino's murder. But from his opponents the message remained the same, that Marcos should resign...