Filipino journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been held in pre-trial detention since February 2020 for “illegal possession of firearms” and “financing terrorism” — charges based on fabricated evidence, as revealed by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) last week. As these baseless accusations are beginning to unravel and her trial nears its end, RSF has discovered the existence of another case against the journalist, in which she is accused of participating in an ambush that resulted in the deaths of two soldiers. An exclusive RSF investigation carried out on the ground discovered that these new claims are as flimsy and implausible as the charges that have kept her behind bars for the past five years.
In January 2020, just weeks before Frenchie Mae Cumpio’s arrest on trumped-up firearms and terrorism charges, police quietly submitted another report linking her to the killing of two soldiers. In this separate case, long dormant, the director of community-based news outlet Eastern Vista is charged with “double murder” and “multiple attempted murder [sic],” alongside several other defendants, including activists and members of civil society.
The case has barely advanced in the five years since the report was filed, and the journalist had no official knowledge of these murder charges until just a few months ago. At the time of this writing, it is not clear who brought the case against her. What is apparent, however, is how unsubstantiated these claims seem — just like the charges she’s currently facing in court. With all charges brought together, the 26-year-old journalist faces up to 40 years of imprisonment.
The murders took place on 18 October 2019 near Sumoroy, in Northern Samar province — a remote locality more than seven hours by road from Tacloban, the city where Frenchie was residing at the time. Her presence at the ambush site appears all the more unlikely given that, by that time, she was already under military surveillance as part of a preliminary investigation into the very case that led to the search of her home and her arrest a few months later, on 7 February 2020.
According to RSF information, no material evidence supports her presence at the scene. Similar to her ongoing trial, the accusations are based on the testimony of former communist rebels. In this new case, one of them claims to have survived the ambush. Now an army auxiliary, he says he managed to crawl close to the shooting and clearly identify five of the seven attackers. In his affidavit, he claims Frenchie Mae Cumpio was “the first” person that he “immediately recognised,” stating that he knew her “personally” for her alleged role in recruiting members for the New People’s Army (NPA), a communist insurgent group designated as a terrorist organisation. At the time, Frenchie was already a well-known journalist in the region. Had she been identified as linked to such activities, she would likely have already been arrested.
The only other known witness in the case — also a paramilitary soldier and purported survivor of the attack — does not mention the journalist among the attackers he identified in his sworn statement.
“First, the accusations brought against Frenchie Mae Cumpio for ‘illegal possession of firearms’ and ‘financing terrorism’ were exposed as bogus by RSF reporting and the hearings in her ongoing trial. Now, a long-dormant and suspicious case has suddenly been revived, accusing her of a double murder committed six years ago. The initial evidence we have reviewed paints a scenario just as far-fetched as the case she is currently facing. We condemn this blatant legal harassment to keep her in jail and call on the Philippine authorities to end this abuse of the justice system to silence a renowned journalist. — Arnaud Froger, Head of the RSF Investigation Desk
“It looks like leverage”
Despite the gravity of the allegations and the status of the victims, the witness’ “immediate identification” of Frenchie never led to her arrest in the weeks or even months that followed. Whereas she was supposed to be closely monitored by the military for far less serious suspicions, she was never questioned in connection with this ambush, neither before nor after her February 2020 arrest. The circumstances are so improbable that it is difficult to believe such a case could even exist at the time.
Yet the case formally proceeded. On 7 September 2020 and 6 August 2021, arrest warrants for the journalist were issued by a judge for the new murder charges. Attempts to apprehend the journalist failed as not only was her name misspelled, but she had already been in detention for months due to the first case. “It looks like leverage as the ongoing case could be dismissed,” said an individual familiar with the case, who requested anonymity.
Even more troubling, RSF has learned in the course of its fact-finding mission in July that, at the request of the murdered soldiers’ families, the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR) had opened a parallel investigation into the double murder of the soldiers, alongside the judicial inquiry. The institution, whose mandate is to investigate human rights violations committed by state agents against civilians, found itself investigating a journalist who is already the target of unfounded charges brought by former rebels, dubious police and military methods, and severe procedural failures.
When questioned by RSF in Manila on this apparent deviation from its core mandate, the Commission assured us that its inquiry into Frenchie’s alleged participation in a double murder had since been closed “for lack of sufficient evidence.”
In 2025, the archipelago ranked 116th out of 180 in the 2025 RSF World Press Freedom Index.
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This article, “Filipino Journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio Now Accused of Double Murder,” is the second part of an exclusive RSF investigation into the case of Frenchie Mae Cumpio.
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