RP military accused of allowing rebels to escape
RP military accused of allowing rebels to escape
MANILA (Agencies): A Roman Catholic priest once kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf rebels on southern Basilan island has accused top military officers of conniving with the rebels holding 21 U.S. and Filipino hostages, a report said on Thursday.
Father Cirilo Nacorda named five military officers in a newspaper report on Thursday and charged they had allowed the kidnappers to escape even though they had allegedly trapped the gunmen.
But the military rejected the priest's charges, with one general identified in the alleged fiasco threatening to haul him to court.
Hundreds of government troops had surrounded the Abu Sayyaf gunmen with their victims on Basilan island when they occupied Nacorda's church and a nearby hospital on June 2.
The hostage-takers managed to slip away through a backdoor. Nacorda's bodyguard was killed in the attack, while the priest managed to escape.
"We no longer suspect, we already believe that there was connivance," Nacorda was quoted saying by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Thursday.
"We have strong and hard evidence. The people will talk and I am collecting sworn statements to prove this," Nacorda said.
Nacorda, a priest in the Saint Peter's church occupied by the rebels, hid in the church building during the raid and emerged after they fled.
On Thursday, the Philippine military cried foul over accusations by the priest that top officials have been coddling Abu Sayyaf rebels holding captive 21 Americans and Filipinos for almost three months on a southern island.
Armed forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan said the accusations that a general and a colonel were paid to allow the Abu Sayyaf rebels to flee from a military cordon in June are "absurd and ridiculous".
"These terrorists have been killing and abducting innocent civilians and we are doing our job to stop them," he said in a television interview. "For us to be accused of conniving with them is really totally detestable."
Adan, however, stressed that the military was willing to conduct a probe into the accusations as soon as the accuser, Father Cirilo Nacorda, "shares" his evidence.
"We would certainly look into the evidence of Father Nacorda, although we believe that what he has are hearsay," he said. "We would be happy to launch an investigation."
The controversy centers on the escape of the Abu Sayyaf rebels from a hospital and church compound in Lamitan town on Basilan island province, 900 kilometers south of Manila, on June 2 despite a military cordon around the area.
The military has admitted that operational lapses allowed the extremists to flee the siege.
Nacorda claimed that Brig. Gen. Romeo Dominguez and Col. Juvenal Narcise ordered the troops to withdraw from the hospital and church compound where the Abu Sayyaf were holed up with their hostages.
The priest was abducted by the Abu Sayyaf in 1994.
He said nurses and other staff members of the Lamitan Emergency Hospital saw Dominguez and Narcise bringing a black attache case full of 1,000-peso ($20) bills after the extremists escaped.
Nacorda's accusations came after the Abu Sayyaf rebels raided two predominantly Christian villages in Lamitan town last week, briefly holding captive 35 residents and beheading 10 of them.
The attack, which took place despite an intensified offensive against the Abu Sayyaf, fueled suspicion that military officials were coddling the extremists.
In a statement, Dominguez said Nacorda's accusations were full of loopholes and could have been a result of the trauma he experienced during the June 2 attack in Lamitan.
"My conscience is clear," he said. "I believe that any commander who gave the order, as Father Nacorda described it, would have been shot dead by the troops themselves. Every soldier in that clash was raring to skin the Abu Sayyaf bandits alive."
Dominguez added that he would have "skinned alive" any commander or soldier talking about a pay-off to let the Abu Sayyaf escape.