Muslim detainees board their bus to take them back to their detention following one of the reinvestigation hearings to review their cases at the the special court near their detention compound at Camp Bagong Diwa, Paranaque city, south of Manila, Philippines. In the country's dogged pursuit of terror suspects, Philippine law enforcers have made a slew of mistaken arrests. Photo: Jim Gomez / Associated Press
A Filipino activist clenches his fist in front of a mock police mugshot display during a rally by activists and Filipino Muslims in front of the Justice Department in Manila, to protest the continuing detention of their relatives whom they claimed were wrongfully arrested. Photo: Bullit Marquez / Associated Press
More than a decade ago, the military declared they had killed an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping suspect named Abdulmukim Idris. Yet a man authorities accuse of being Idris continues to languish in a maximum-security jail where the Philippines holds some of its most notorious terror suspects.
In the country’s dogged pursuit of terror suspects, it also has nabbed two “Black Tungkangs,” two “Abdasil Dimas,” two “Hussien Kasims.” Those are just a few of the signs that Philippine law enforcers have made a slew of mistaken arrests in going after Abu Sayyaf and other Islamic militant groups long active in this Southeast Asian nation’s south.
Complaints of false arrests prompted low-key but unprecedented re-investigations of some of the country’s high-profile terrorism cases by state prosecutors. They have led to the release of more than two dozen people who were either mistaken for Abu Sayyaf fighters or brought to trial without evidence, according to official findings.
In their latest review, issued in August, state prosecutors said such faulty arrests of villagers, some of whom could not be identified even by a single witness, are “abhorred in civilized societies like ours.”
An Associated Press investigation that included interviews with prosecutors, key witnesses and a freed detainee shows that dozens more people remain behind bars despite a lack of evidence against them. For instance, of the two detainees accused of being the Abu Sayyaf militant who used the nom de guerre Black Tungkang, one remains in custody, even though a former hostage has sworn that neither was the right man.
Hundreds of Abu Sayyaf militants have been killed or captured since the country’s south became a battleground in the U.S.-led war on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While Manila’s constitution restricts America’s involvement to noncombat support, the countries’ cooperation in the decline of the Abu Sayyaf, dreaded for its bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings, has been regarded as a counter-terrorism success story.
But mistakes are a concern in the Philippines’ slow and overburdened law enforcement and criminal justice system, which has a backlog of thousands of cases and is tainted by corruption allegations.
Under a 2007 antiterror law, law-enforcement officials can be fined 500,000 pesos ($11,200) for each day they wrongfully detain a terror suspect. The law has been used at least twice, but Loretta Ann Rosales, who heads the Commission on Human Rights, said officers can avoid it by charging terrorism suspects with common crimes.
http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/String-of-mistaken-arrests-mar-Philippines-6002814.php#photo-7363793
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