EDITORIAL - Urgent attention needed

While tempers were flaring over the constituent assembly and miffed foreigners were packing up after two regional summits in Cebu were postponed, heavily armed men raided the provincial jail in Cotabato and freed an inmate facing charges of bombing the Cotabato airport in 2003.

Police said a jail guard was wounded in a gun battle that erupted when Barudin Dalungan was freed by the three men who were dressed in soldiers’ uniforms and armed with assault rifles. Dalungan is suspected to be a member of a special urban squad of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and so are the three raiders. Authorities believe his attack on the Cotabato airport was meant to divert troops from an offensive against the MILF.

Dalungan is not the first terror suspect to escape. In the most notorious jailbreak in recent years, Jemaah Islamiyah bomb-maker Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi and two Abu Sayyaf militants waltzed out of detention at Camp Crame, headquarters of the Philippine National Police, while Australian Prime Minister John Howard was visiting Manila.

The track record of the police and military in dealing with the terror threat has been mixed. Al-Ghozi was arrested and convicted and, after he escaped, was later tracked down and shot dead. Top commanders of the Abu Sayyaf have been neutralized. Manila police chanced upon a botched testing of explosives in Malate that led to the arrest of the man behind the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and the discovery of a bigger plot to crash planes into landmarks in the United States.

But the Abu Sayyaf, in cahoots with JI, has also succeeded in recent years in bombing a ferry in Manila Bay as well as the Davao International Airport and city port, leaving over a hundred people dead. Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani and the two Indonesians wanted for the deadly bombings in Bali in 2002 remain elusive; yesterday there were reports that they might have slipped out of Sulu and fled to Lanao. Shortly before the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was postponed, the US, Britain and Australia warned of a "credible" terrorist plot to attack the regional gathering.

One slip by security officers and scores of lives can be lost. This is a problem that needs urgent attention. As the jailbreak in Cotabato shows, terrorists move when the nation is distracted.