P1-M reward offered for capture of 5 escapees from Basilan jail

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The governor of Basilan has offered a P1 million incentive in exchange for any information leading to the capture of five prisoners who escaped from a jail in the province with the help of two armed intruders on Sunday, March 30.

Gov. Hadjiman Salliman told reporters on Tuesday, April 1, that his office has allocated P1 million as a reward for the capture of the five escapees, Mahad Hassan, Teddi Boga, Amar Mohammad, Ibrahim Badju and Muad Ahmad.

Local officials said Hassan, Boga and Mohammad are being prosecuted separately for murder. Badju and Ahmad were jailed for possession of powerful explosives, charged with separate criminal cases that are still pending in different courts. The five of them are still undergoing judicial proceedings for the offenses that led to their detention in the Basilan Provincial Jail.

Officials of the Army’s 101st Infantry Brigade and the Basilan Provincial Police Office are cooperating in locating Hassan, Boga, Mohammad, Badju and Ahmad and the two men who, on Sunday arrived at the jail, pretended as visitors, disarmed the jail guards on duty at gunpoint and set them free. They hurriedly left the jail premises and disappeared.

“Everything is being done to locate them, return them to the Basilan Provincial Jail,” Salliman said.

Brig. Gen. Romeo Macapaz, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters on Tuesday that personnel of all municipal and city police stations in Basilan are helping the provincial jail management determine the exact location now of the five men and their two accomplices.