Lessons never learned

It was an undeservedly ignominious final day in office for outgoing Philippine National Police chief Egay Aglipay, and a somewhat inauspicious start for new PNP chief Art Lomibao. Fortunately for both gentlemen, things turned out alright.

The standoff between Abu Sayyaf detainees and police at the maximum security facility at Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan resulted in four ASG leaders and 18 alleged Group members killed. Many questions, though, remain unanswered.

Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Angie Reyes was on television a few hours after the police assault, heatedly insisting that the Special Action Force team that mounted the attack should be given their due credit. And indeed they should, even if the usual Monday morning quarterbacks will question the heavy toll the police assault took, considering the small number of Abu Sayyaf that took part in the botched escape and the few weapons with which they faced the well-armed SAF team.

But there can be no question, in my view, that the SAF contingent did a good job under difficult circumstances. The ASG prisoners apparently had three .45 caliber pistols with 50 rounds of ammo, the M-14 rifle of the murdered guard, some improvised Molotov cocktails, even a fragmentation grenade.

We don’t know at this point whether the intelligence the police had before the assault pinpointed the weapons the prisoners had and the men who would wield them. Thus, when the invading force entered the building, they had no way of knowing the casualties they might have sustained. While they knew generally that the ASG was concentrated on the first floor, I’m sure they didn’t know for sure. In retrospect, there could have been smaller groups in the upper floors.

Nor were they able to ascertain in advance where the concentrations of resistance would be. They were, in effect, walking into an ambush and they knew it. They relied on surprise to reduce the risks somewhat.

The SAF assault team numbered about 300, a force obviously meant to overwhelm, with reserves and snipers positioned outside the building, and a helicopter-borne group which eventually wasn’t needed. This was one encounter they had no intention of losing or, worse, ending in a stalemate.

All in all, the SAF should be congratulated. For many of the team members, this was their baptism of fire, their first test of actual, life-threatening battle. But they exhibited competence, discipline and maturity. They are a credible force for law and order. Still, this was a relative cakewalk. They must be ready to face stiffer challenges.

We can’t be as complimentary, however, of their colleagues, particularly the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology. The botched jailbreak, which reportedly started with the fatal stabbing of a guard and the taking of his gun, was the culmination not so much of so-called "lapses" in security procedures but of a virtual breakdown of the entire security mechanism in a supposed maximum security detention facility.

The Jail Warden, who has happily been relieved, was all over radio claiming that security procedures at the facility were tight. But, he argued, because human rights activists kept insisting that inspection procedures and prisoner segregation practices violated constitutional rights, certain concessions had to be made. He did not deny that firearms were indeed smuggled in through female visitors who were not thoroughly searched. I am glad this Jail Warden was relieved. The book should be thrown at this joker. Luckily for him, stupidity in office is not a criminal offense.

The BJMP Director should be called on the carpet, not only on the ground of command responsibility, but also to answer for what appear to be fundamental errors in the detention system. Even CNN reporters are asking why terrorists were kept in the same facility as drug lords and other common criminals. Nor were there special handling procedures in place to take into account that terrorists tend to be desperate men who utilize extraordinary measures in the name of their "principles" and religious beliefs. Terrorists have networks that supply money, firearms and other resources which are tapped to spring their leaders and followers from jail. We’ve seen this before. We should have been a lot smarter.

Terrorists seem more adept at planning escapes than ordinary inmates. Family and conjugal visits were specially exploited to smuggle arms, documents, cell phones and other contraband into the maximum security facility. One Muslim inmate was talking on his cell phone to a TV news anchor at the very moment the assault began. A wife of another Muslim inmate, who did not want to be identified, told a radio anchor that she had slept at the facility the night before the failed breakout. That privilege cost her P100 each time she visited. A "VIP" accommodation cost P500 and bought a couple a little privacy. All this, and probably more, was tolerated in a maximum security facility.

It is clear that the President and Congress ought to look into, not just abuses in particular detention centers, but the basic infrastructure and manpower quality in our obsolete detention system. Gone are the days when the whole country had a few thousand prisoners. Today we have tens of thousands just in major cities, but we still pack them into cramped cells in the most primitive and inhuman of conditions.

This is one area crying out for urgent funding from Congress. The money should enable focused and coordinated planning of the location of detention centers away from urban areas, their appropriate size in light of actual and anticipated prisoner populations, the modernization of facilities and security equipment, and an upgraded training regimen for guards and custodians. Facilities should have different housing and handling procedures for terrorists, common criminals, and white-collar crime convicts. Detention facilities for women and children should be improved substantially.

We can keep firing Jail Wardens all we want. Prisoners will still escape from our porous jails that are hotbeds of incorrigible corruption, as well as an international embarrassment. The Camp Bagong Diwa incident was preventable. The fact that it happened emphasizes the urgency of the problem and the need for immediate action.