Philippine police have arrested a Manila-based doctor, accusing her of being a leader of a Maoist rebel group that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the central government.
Maria Natividad Castro, 53, is being held without bail and would be tried on charges of kidnapping, for which a lower court had ordered her arrest in 2020, police said in a statement on Friday.
However, her former employer, human rights monitor Karapatan, said that Castro was facing “trumped up” charges after she investigated alleged human rights abuses in the volatile Mindanao region while also setting up community health centers there.
She was arrested at