Robot puts in a good word for Aventajado

This time it’s Commander Robot, also known as Ghalib Andang, who’s taking up the cudgels for President Estrada and presidential adviser Robert Aventajado.

The Abu Sayyaf chieftain, who engineered the kidnapping of 21 mostly foreign hostages from a Malaysian resort island last April, wrote a letter to Aventajado last week saying he was willing to testify that neither Mr. Estrada nor his adviser had taken a cut off the ransom paid for the hostages’ release.

"There’s no truth to the report of the German magazine (Der Spiegel) and the Jesus Miracle Crusade (JMC) lied when it claimed you have a share of the ransom," Robot said in a hand-written letter to Aventajado dated Dec. 15.

Robot said he wrote the former chief negotiator because he heard over the radio, most probably on short wave, that a JMC member and Der Spiegel claimed that the President and Aventajado had received a commission from the ransom.

"Only God knows the truth. If you really want to disprove the allegation against you by the German magazine and the JMC, send a voice tape from the Supreme Court so that I can be your witness against them," the Abu Sayyaf leader said in his letter written in Filipino.

He explained that the allegation against the two was meant to "destroy their reputation so that the Filipinos would lose their faith" in the Estrada administration.

Der Spiegel came out with an article saying Mr. Estrada and Aventajado skimed 40 percent and 10 percent, respectively, off a $20 million ransom paid for unnamed hostages.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said the German secret police eventually denied that it was the source of the story.