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A ticking time bomb walks
to freedom
By Marco Garrido
MANILA - How did Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi escape
from the Philippine National Police (PNP) prison
compound last week? It would appear that he simply
walked out.
On July 14, the Indonesian Jema'ah
Islamiyah (JI) bomb expert, along with two other
inmates, members of the Abu Sayyaf bandit group,
apparently unlocked their cell with a set of spare keys,
relocked it, walked out of the jail building and through
the prison gates, and used a small guardhouse to vault
over the compound wall. Of the four guards detailed in
al-Ghozi's area, one was sleeping; another was out
shopping. Nevertheless, the guards managed to register
their hourly head count as complete.
It was the
inmate remaining in al-Ghozi's cell - apparently left
behind because of bad blood with one of the Filipino
escapees - who notified the guards of the escape. They
refused to believe him, however, because the cell
remained padlocked. Only when a new set of guards
arrived five hours later was the escape discovered; and
only hours after that - allowing al-Ghozi a full
half-day head start - was the news reported to
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She had
just met with Australian Prime Minister John Howard to
discuss joint counter-terrorism initiatives.
The bomb maker
According to Rohan
Gunaratna, author of Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network
of Terror, al-Ghozi, 32, was the most important JI
member in custody. He has ties to other senior JI
figures, including Indonesian cleric and alleged JI
mastermind Abu Bakar Ba'asyir and Riduan Isamudin,
otherwise known as Hambali, Osama bin Laden's suspected
point man in Asia. Al-Ghozi studied under Ba'asyir,
trained in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda, and was recruited
by Hambali for the foiled plot to bomb the US,
Australian, and Israeli embassies in Singapore in 2001.
He collaborated with Muklis Yunos, who claims to be a
subcommander in the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation
Front, to engineer the December 2000 bombings in Manila
that killed 22 people. He also admitted to detonating a
bomb that nearly killed the Philippine ambassador to
Indonesia in August 2000.
Al-Ghozi was perhaps
also the most dangerous JI member in custody. He is
notorious for his bomb-making expertise. Gunaratna warns
that "he is the most experienced, the best trained, and
the most well motivated" among JI operatives. "He is the
one man who can put together an operation in such a
short time." Furthermore, he is elusive - in appearance
unassuming and fluent in several Philippine regional
languages - and connected, both in terms of confederates
and supplies.
Dr Zachary Abuza, author of
Tentacles of Terror: Al Qaeda's Southeast Asian
Network, writes that al-Ghozi founded in the
Philippines "a major logistics cell for the network
responsible for acquiring explosives, guns, and other
equipment". His arrest last January led authorities to a
cache of more than a tonne of explosives, which, he
claimed, were to be used for attacks in Southeast Asia.
Security experts say his escape has heightened the
threat of terrorism across the region.
Incompetence, corruption, or
conspiracy?
"For someone who is so important to
have just escaped, how is this possible?" asked Andrew
Tan, a security analyst at the Singapore-based Institute
for Defense and Strategic Studies. His incredulity is a
common reaction.
The incompetence involved in
al-Ghozi's escape is astonishing. His cell door was so
shoddily constructed that it could be opened by lifting
it from the hinges without having to break the padlock.
Not that he had even to undertake such heavy lifting,
however, since it would seem that he and his
confederates were somehow able to acquire spare keys.
It is a further question why al-Ghozi was housed
in the insecure floor of an insecure prison compound. It
would appear that he was transferred from the more
secure ground floor of the Intelligence Group (IG)
building to the laxer second floor upon orders from one
Superintendent Reuben Galban, chief of the PNP Foreign
Intelligence Liaison Office. Galban says he needed
easier access to al-Ghozi in order to cross-examine his
story against that of another notorious detainee, Muklis
Yunos. Yet Yunos was kept on the first floor of the IG
building. It was on the second floor that al-Ghozi was
able to consult with inmate Abu Ali, formerly of the Abu
Sayyaf and a janitor on the floor. Ali provided him
information on the layout of the compound.
Camp
Crame, the PNP compound where the IG building is
located, is infamous for being porous. Al-Ghozi has not
been the only high-profile escapee. Just last year
Faisal Marohombsar, leader of the kidnap-for-ransom
Pentagon Gang, and drug lord Henry Tan bolted Crame.
(Tan sawed off the iron window grills of his detention
cell). In 1995, Khaddafi Janjalani, now the leader of
the Abu Sayyaf, also managed to flee.
There is,
however, a fine line between incompetence and
corruption; and the sheer scale of incompetence
apparently involved makes police connivance seem an
easier explanation to swallow. Philippine Senator
Rodolfo Biazon has said that al-Ghozi's escape cannot be
blamed entirely on incompetence. "I don't want to accept
that conclusion. So the second possibility is collusion
because of payment. This is dangerous".
But it
is an explanation not without evidence. All four guards
on duty at the time of the escape failed lie-detector
tests. One guard, the one who supposedly asleep, even
alleged that they (the guards) were being set up by
higher-ups to take the fall. Superintendent Galban also
failed the polygraph. His vehicle was seen loitering
around the IG compound on the evening of the escape. The
sentry logbook notes that he left the compound twice
that night between 11pm and 2am. Before being summoned
by the investigatory committee, Galban had booked
himself on a flight to the United States.
There
is another lead: one caller to the Radio Mindanao
Network alleged that three-star general and Police
Director for Operations Virtus Gil received a US$10
million bribe to deliver al-Ghozi to an Indonesian group
identified as al-Rahman. While this sum may be
fantastic, it certainly has the effect of putting to
shame the government bounty of P10 million ($500,000) on
al-Ghozi's head.
Conspiracy theories are also
afloat, with perhaps the most current (if not the most
credible) being that former PNP chief and opposition
presidential candidate Panfilo Lacson engineered
al-Ghozi's escape in order to embarrass the Arroyo
administration. The timing of the escape was, after all,
impeccable, with the Australian prime minister in the
country to sign an accord that included A$5 million
($3.3 million) in counter-terrorism aid to the
Philippines.
However, the suspicion extending
willy-nilly through the various levels of the PNP may be
more a sign of organizational fractiousness than of
widespread collusion. The head of the PNP's internal
investigation, Chief Superintendent Eduardo Matillano,
is a possible contender for the role of PNP chief. His
competition largely includes Lacson allies such as
Virtus Gil - some of the same people on whom suspicion
has been (coincidentally?) directed. In any case,
establishing where incompetence ends and corruption
begins is made no easier with shadowy internal politics
as the backdrop.
Fallout in international
confidence
President Arroyo has responded to
al-Ghozi's escape by taking decisive action aimed at
reasserting government control over the situation. The
PNP has launched perhaps the largest manhunt in
Philippine history. Sixty-three special tracker teams
consisting of more than 5,000 police and supplemented by
300,000 security guards and peace officers from some
42,000 villages nationwide have been deployed in the
search for the terrorist.
More than just finding
al-Ghozi, however, Arroyo has aimed with perhaps even
greater intent at purging the organization that allowed
his escape. She has called on the PNP leadership to
"shape up or ship out" and threatened a "top-to-bottom
revamp" of the organization. To date, 20 police and
intelligence officers have been fired; the four guards
on duty at the time of al-Ghozi's escape face criminal
charges - infidelity in the custody of prisoners - and
six others face administrative charges. She has rejected
PNP Chief Hermogenes Edbane's verbal offer to resign -
at least for now - and instead has ordered him to redeem
himself by recapturing al-Ghozi. She has commissioned an
independent probe of the escape and ordered the
construction of a new, suffice to say more secure,
prison building for high-profile detainees. To an
extent, the swiftness of the action now being taken
smacks of action being taken too late, but in terms of
the fallout in international confidence, it is certainly
too late.
Both the United States and Australia
have renewed their travel advisories against the
Philippines. The spokesperson for the US ambassador to
the Philippines has called the incident "a big setback"
in the fight against terrorism. US President George W
Bush has reportedly been advised to cancel his scheduled
visit to the country.
In perhaps the most
articulate condemnation of the escape, the Sydney
Morning Herald has wrung its hands over the ease with
which terrorists flourish in the Philippines and how
this "puts the rest of the region at risk". The Herald
went on to question the wisdom of Australia's
anti-terror investment in the Philippines: "... as long
as the security forces and bureaucracy of the
Philippines and other nations in the region remain
vulnerable to corruption, no amount of aid for
specialist police training can guarantee the
anti-terrorist effort".
Likewise, al-Ghozi's
escape might also suggest new priority areas for the war
on terror. Some part of the enormous amount of aid being
funneled to developing countries such as the Philippines
largely to build military and intelligence capacities
might be more wisely directed toward developmental ends
such as building institutions and law-and-order
capabilities. Such aid would help weak countries not
only catch and keep terrorists but grow strong enough to
deter terrorism from taking root and flourishing within
their borders.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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