MANILA, Philippines?Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Chair Leila de Lima said over the weekend that she will order retired Gen. Jovito Palparan to produce the photos and video that allegedly show that Filipino-American Melissa Roxas is a communist rebel, stressing however, that the activist?s political affiliation was irrelevant to her torture complaint.

De Lima said she will schedule another hearing this week to view the materials that party-list representatives Palparan and Pastor Alcover showed the media last week, ?in the interest of a thorough, objective and balanced determination of the truth.?

However, ?I wish to stress that the issue before CHR is the alleged abduction and torture (of Roxas), and not her alleged affiliation... We must remember that freedom from torture is a non-derogable human right. Under no circumstance, not even a state of war or conflict, can torture of anyone be justified,? De Lima said.

At any rate, De Lima said that Roxas, who has claimed that military agents in Tarlac abducted and tortured her for six days in May, would be allowed to comment on Palparan?s allegations. Her lawyer has already denied that she was a member of the communist new People?s Army.

Meanwhile, an official of the militant Bagong Alyansan Makabayan (Bayan) Sunday raised the possibility that Roxas was mistaken by her abductors for another foreign-based activist.

?They (abductors) might have confused Melissa with another activist, Maita Santiago,? Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes told the Inquirer in an interview on Friday.

Santiago, a Filipino based in Canada, is a former secretary general of Migrante International. Santiago also spent time in Central Luzon when she was active in Migrante.

The suspicion that Roxas?s abduction was a case of mistaken identity rose after the victim recalled that her torturers kept calling her ?Maita.? They also thought she was a Canadian citizen.

Roxas herself narrated this during the public hearing at the CHR on Thursday. ?I kept telling them I was Melissa Roxas... one of the interrogators called me Maita,? Roxas recounted.

?Initially, they thought I was a Canadian citizen. They told me, ?Do you actually think the Canadian embassy will help you?? I said I was an American citizen,? Roxas said.

Reyes suggested that Roxas?s citizenship might have been one reason her captors released her.

?People were already looking for her. It would have been a big scandal if she wasn?t found,? Reyes said.

The United States is the Philippine?s biggest source of military aid and technical assistance.

Reyes quoted Roxas?s as saying that even the torture on her eased up after she insisted that she was a US citizen.

Roxas, a member of Bayan USA and the Los Angeles-based militant cultural group Habi, has been in and out of the Philippines since April 2007 for an ?extended exposure program? under the auspices of Bayan-Philippines.

Reyes said that Roxas was just one of many Filipino activists born or raised in foreign lands who come over to discover their roots.