COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Local officials are complaining about the government’s inaction on their request for the transfer of more than 30 “high risk” inmates from the North Cotabao provincial jail to detention facilities in other regions.
Residents of Kidapawan City have witnessed recent bloody attacks on the provincial jail and the nearby Kidapawan City jail, where Moro rebels rescued inmates jailed for various criminal offenses, including bombings, extortion and multiple murders.
North Cotabato’s provincial jail warden, Chief Inspector Mary Chanette Espartero, said some of the more than 30 “high risk” inmates are confessed members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Lack of judges in North Cotabato has also been blamed for the prolonged detention of the maximum security detainees.
Espartero said many inmates have been detained longer than expected because of the slow litigation of their respective cases due to lack of judges.
There are more than 700 inmates at the North Cotabato provincial jail, which was designed to hold 300 detainees only.
“We’re hoping the expansion of the judiciary’s `justice on wheels’ program in North Cotabato, which is to start anytime soon, will help address this problem,” Espartero said.
Under the program, judges will preside over pending cases in buses that would travel around the province.
Local officials in North Cotabato and Kidapawan City have long been asking for the transfer of “high risk” inmates to other parts of Mindanao that are far from the reach of criminal gangs and guerrilla groups to whom they belong.
The North Cotabato provincial jail was twice attacked by Moro rebels in recent years.
The attackers broke through the fences of the jail using B-40 anti-tank rockets and set free dozens of inmates, among them bomb experts trained by the Taliban in Afganistan and Pakistan.
Three people were killed while more than a dozen others were injured when bandits attempted to spring from the Kidapawan City jail early this year a notorious guerrilla commander, Datukan Samad, who is facing multiple murder, frustrated murder, gunrunning and drug trafficking cases in different courts.
Samad was transferred to the Maguindanao provincial jail last March, but escaped, along with 11 others, two months later and has been at large since.