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.