Basilan judge slain in Zamboanga City ambush

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Motorcycle-riding gunmen killed a regional trial court judge from Basilan province in the Bangsamoro region in an attack on Thursday morning, November 12, along a busy stretch of Tumaga-Putik Road in Zamboanga City.

Senior officials of the Police Regional Office 9 and the military’s Western Mindanao Command based in Zamboanga City told reporters after the incident that Joseph Wee Sit, presiding judge in the Regional Trial Court Branch 2 in Isabela City in Basilan, was driving his red sports utility vehicle when one of two men riding a motorcycle together, trailing behind, opened fire as they got close and immediately motored away.

Sit, who sustained multiple bullet wounds in the head and face, was declared dead on arrival at a hospital where emergency responders brought him for treatment.

Provincial officials in Basilan, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, had condemned the atrocity that left Sit dead.

"We want his killers identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of law," Basilan Vice Gov. Hadjiman Salliman told reporters at noon Thursday.

Officials of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, among them BARMM Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua and the region’s local government minister, Jordan Bayam, separately told reporters that they are optimistic that the Police Regional Office 9 and its units in Zamboanga City can together put a speedy closure to the incident.

Macacua had asked BARMM’s regional police director, Brig. Gen. Christopher Abecia, to order the officers in their units in Basilan to help their counterparts in Zamboanga City identify the killers of Sit for prosecution.