Four, With Help of ACLU, Sue Marcos for $111 Million

Four people who suffered from the rule of former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, including two outspoken opposition leaders, filed suit Thursday against the deposed dictator and his former military chief of staff, asking for $111.1 million to redress the physical and mental torture they allegedly endured.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California announced that it will represent the four individuals in an attempt to show that human rights violators who come to this country can be held answerable to international law and to make it clear that the United States is not a “country club for torturers.”

Florentina Sison, 84, and her sons, Jose Maria Sison, 47, founder of the Philippine Communist Party, and Ramon Sison, 52, were joined by Jaime S. Piopongco in accusing Marcos and Gen. Fabian C. Ver of inflicting “physical and mental suffering and severe emotional distress.”

Filed in Honolulu

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu, alleges that because Marcos and Ver are now living in the United States, they are subject to the same laws binding all U.S. citizens and aliens. According to the suit, Marcos and Ver committed violations of the law of nations, including murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and prolonged detention without trial.

“Human rights violators cannot come to our shores and have legal haven,” said Paul Hoffman, the ACLU’s Southern California legal director. “But the amount of the damages we are requesting is less significant than the principle that Marcos and Ver be brought to justice.”

Nevertheless, “if a large judgment is returned, then it sends the message that the U.S. cannot become a country club for torturers,” ACLU general counsel Mark Rosenbaum said.

Released by Aquino

Jose Maria Sison, who still lives in the Philippines after being released from prison this month by President Corazon Aquino, was the leader of several anti-Marcos organizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s before his arrest by army and security officers in 1977. According to his brother, Ramon, a pathologist in Panorama City, Jose Maria Sison was imprisoned and continually subjected to torture and beatings by Marcos’ aides.

Piopongco, 65, was operations chief of the Philippine Liberal Party from 1969 through 1972, when he was arrested, imprisoned and then placed under house arrest. He escaped from the Philippines in 1977.

The suit alleges that another member of the Sison family, Francisco, was killed in the presidential palace by Marcos’ aides who were interrogating him as to the whereabouts of his brother. Piopongco and all of the surviving Sisons, except for Jose Maria, live in Los Angeles.