RP's army took bribes, alleges Abu Sayyaf leader

RP's army took bribes, alleges Abu Sayyaf leader

MANILA (AFP): An Abu Sayyaf rebel leader Friday alleged he had bribed the army to let his kidnap gang and its U.S. and Filipino hostages break out of a military cordon.

The rebel leader's allegations, which back up charges of collusion made by a former Abu Sayyaf hostage, were made 83 days into the latest hostage crisis involving the Moro gunmen in the south.

"The soldiers were only three meters away ... they didn't attack because that was the agreement," said Abu Sabaya, a faction leader of the Abu Sayyaf, which is holding 18 captives, including U.S. Christian missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham, on Basilan island.

He declined to identify any of the officers who might have received the alleged pay-off.

DZRH radio aired a telephone interview with Sabaya amid a defense department probe into claims by a Basilan Roman Catholic priest that the military committed treason by pulling out troops who had cornered the gunmen inside a Basilan hospital on June 2.

Sabaya alleged that he had handed over a sum of money to a representative of Basilan Governor Wahab Akbar "to handle the military".

The "agreement" was for the soldiers to let the kidnappers slip through the military cordon around the hospital, Sabaya said.

The military and Akbar immediately rejected his allegations.

"The terrorists have made up all these accusations because these are propaganda aimed at destroying the integrity of the military," said Colonel Fredesvindo Covarrubias, head of the civil relations group in the southern Philippines.

Akbar said Sabaya's claim was part of a "psy-war", or psychological warfare, designed to derail military operations against the rebels.

But Sabaya's claim that he enjoys the protection of certain military officers appears to dovetail with an account from former Filipino Abu Sayyaf hostage Jose Torres.

Excerpts of his book Into the Mountain. Hostaged by the Abu Sayyaf were published by the Philippine Inquirer newspaper Friday.

Torres said a fellow Basilan hostage had recounted to him how Sabaya would speak via satellite telephone with a supposed military officer to coordinate the kidnap gang's pull-out from a hideout, shortly before it was pounded by artillery and captured by the army.

Several of the teachers abducted from a Basilan school in April last year recounted to Torres how the gang walked past five military detachments in full view of army sentries, who let them pass.

Meanwhile, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said on Friday she would meet leaders of Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei in separate meetings next week to discuss regional and bilateral economic cooperation.

Arroyo said Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri would visit Manila on Aug. 22, the same day the Philippine president leaves for a state visits to Brunei and Singapore.

In another development, Arroyo still enjoys steady public support despite concerns over the sluggish economy and security, an opinion poll said.

The country's leading pollster, the Social Weather Stations (SWS), said 46 percent of respondents in the July 9-27 poll were satisfied with Arroyo's performance. Some 29 percent said they were dissatisfied and the rest were undecided.