Joke only

Anthony Gara, the hapless resident of Zamboanga del Norte who was mistaken by the police for Abu Sayyaf commander Radulan Sahiron, should go ahead and file a complaint against his captors.

If someone does not start teaching cops a lesson in effective law enforcement, we will never see the end of these wrongful arrests. They can be hilarious, as in the case of the wrong Sahiron, as long as you’re not the one who gets manhandled by members of the Philippine National Police (PNP).

Since the administration appears reluctant to teach any cop a lesson in this bungled arrest, even if it was an embarrassment for President Arroyo, it’s up to Gara to seek redress.

Gara does not seem to be impoverished, unlike the millions of Filipinos living below the poverty line who are the common victims of wrongful arrests, illegal detention and police brutality in this country. But he does not appear to have a regular job, and it is doubtful that he can finance litigation expenses if he decides to sue. There must be some human rights lawyer willing to represent Gara pro bono so he can pursue his complaint.

This is not making a mountain out of a molehill, as the PNP would want the public to see it. Gara’s case is just another one of many instances of sloppy police work whose main objective is not to promote public safety but to promote oneself and win brownie points with bosses.

This kind of law enforcement encourages human rights violations, from minor beatings to summary executions.

This kind of law enforcement leads to the arrest of the innocent, which means the real culprit remains at large, free to perpetrate more crimes and terrorist attacks.

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That should worry Filipinos, who tend to look the other way when cops torture or gun down notorious baddies such as members of the Kuratong Baleleng or the Pentagon gang.

This public infatuation with Dirty Harry types stems from frustration over the weak criminal justice system.

If you’re a crime victim, you can only pray that the PNP will get the culprit. If an arrest is announced, you hope that the cops got the right man. And if it’s the right man and the offense is non-bailable, you hope the suspect won’t escape from detention, and the case won’t be dismissed because of technical lapses in the arrest and police investigation.

Litigation can take ages in this country. So when a man arrested for raping and murdering an eight-year-old girl is shot dead by cops when he — according to the police — tries, in handcuffs, to grab a cop’s gun in an effort to escape, few people are bothered by the obvious holes in that story. What matters is that the world is rid of one less pervert, and the nation is spared from an interminable wait for justice.

This is fine when the dead suspect has been positively identified by his accomplices, as was the case with that girl’s rapist, who was nabbed by Manila policemen.

But when cops get the wrong man — and this happens often — in their rush to declare a case closed, it can only aggravate the weakness of the justice system.

Honest mistakes may be forgiven, if they don’t happen too often and no one gets killed or seriously hurt. A bigger problem is when cops plant evidence, produce fake witnesses or use torture to make suspects confess.

Physical and psychological torture can sometimes work to extract the truth from a hardened criminal or determined terrorist. But an interrogator must know when to draw the line. At a certain point suffering can compel a person to say whatever his interrogators want to hear, and his "confession" will amount to nothing but rubbish.

Gara should be glad that he’s still alive, and the worst that he suffered — according to him — was to be slugged three times on the head before he was dragged to a van where his eyes were covered with packing tape by members of a police anti-terrorism unit headed by Senior Superintedent Rodolfo "Boogie" Mendoza.

The talk at Camp Crame is that Boogie Mendoza is a publicity hound who takes credit for successful operations that are not his handiwork. The Chinese-Filipino community has a bigger beef against him, which has derailed his appointment to sensitive positions.

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To be fair, Philippine cops are not the only ones who grab the wrong suspects. The war on terror has led law enforcers around the world to round up thousands of suspected militants. A number of them are held in Guantanamo and in detention centers in other countries, in legal limbo, without formal charges.

Many detainees have been released after interrogation that sometimes last several months. Some of those released complained of beatings and other forms of abuse while in detention. Those complaints have further fanned the resentments that feed the Islamist fire.

Given the nature of the terror threat, where the enemy does not play by the rules of the civilized world but uses those rules against pursuers, I can understand why law enforcers in different countries may resort to unconventional methods of apprehending and interrogating suspects.

Philippine cops were experts at those methods long before Islamist terrorism became a serious threat. They should have learned their lessons long ago about the consequences of such methods. The resentment generated by wrongful arrests and police brutality became an effective recruitment tool of the communist movement, and to this day, long after the end of the cold war, our country faces one of the few remaining communist insurgencies.

Now there is a different threat to national security, and the same methods are being employed in going after the country’s most notorious terror suspects.

Anthony Gara should be glad that his captors appeared to be interested in posing for pictures with him and President Arroyo. Radulan Sahiron is a prize catch, with a $5-million bounty on his head. Now he knows that authorities want to get him alive.

Other Abu Sayyaf members were not so lucky. The group’s founder Abdurajak Janjalani was gunned down. So was flamboyant spokesman Aldam Tilao, a.k.a. Abu Sabaya. Ghalib Andang, the notorious Commander Robot, lost both legs.

Gara could have lost his remaining arm, if not his life, if he had resisted arrest.

It’s not the first time that someone has been mistaken for a terrorist. The difference is that those wrongfully apprehended in other countries are not flown immediately to the capital for a photo op with the president.

Radulan Sahiron is howling with laughter, and the joke is on us.