LUCENA CITY, Philippines -- Two detainees at the Quezon provincial jail chose to stay behind bars instead of joining the escape of seven other “political prisoners” set free by New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas last Saturday.

The detainees maintained they were legal activists and not armed revolutionaries.

Alexis Uy, 28, a former activist from the University of the Philippines-Diliman, and farmer Joseph Binsal, from San Narciso, Quezon, said they did not join their fellow political prisoners in the escape because they were "not armed revolutionaries."

"The authorities claimed that I am an NPA but I'm not. I'm a militant activist but not an armed revolutionary. I have nothing to do with all those cases filed against me. As a matter of fact, I surrendered myself on the day of my birthday to prove my innocence," said Uy.

Uy is a Community Development graduate from the state university, a course he claimed took him to remote areas in Quezon as part of his research and studies.

He admitted that he often joined anti-government rallies when he was still out of prison in pursuit of his social activism.

Uy said the nine prisoners at the provincial jail -- the seven who escaped, Binsal and himself -- had been classified by human rights groups as "political detainees."

When the NPA guerrillas shouted during last Saturday’s raid for all political detainees to come out of their cells and escape with them, the two said they did not heed the call.

"We both decided to stay to clear our names under the legal process. I had the idea that the attackers were NPA but I decided to remain in prison to finish the trial of my cases," Uy said.

Binsal, standing beside Uy, nodded in agreement.

He said the military suspected him of being a communist rebel and he was slapped with charges of murder and frustrated murder after his arrest in 2003.

"I'm not an NPA," he said.

Uy said he surrendered to the military in Quezon province in April 2007 and was committed to the jail in May last year.

He said the military filed a total of nine criminal cases against him but only five are still on trial as the rest have been dismissed by the courts.

With the escape of their fellow political detainees, the two have expressed fears the military would vent their ire on them.

"This is our main concern. The military might do us harm for the escape of our fellow political prisoners. But we have nothing to do with the escape. As a matter of fact, we decided to stay despite the invitation for us to set ourselves free," he said.

Uy hinted that three of the escaped political detainees -- Gemma Carag, Cecilia Mondia and Noel Santos -- could have had advance information of the rescue operation.

He said the three had bags ready when they hurriedly left with the attackers.

This confirmed earlier information from Major General Delfin Bangit, commander of the Armed Forces Southern Luzon Command based in Camp Nakar here.

According to Bangit, the objective of the attack was to forcibly free Carag, Mondia and Santos.

"They are the ones who can testify in court on the veracity of what is contained in the laptop recovered when they were arrested," Bangit said

According to military dossiers, Carag and Santos are suspected to be secretaries of the NPA-Quezon provincial committee while Mondia was allegedly the organizer of NPA-Guerrilla Front 42 operating in the province.

The three were captured by Army soldiers in June 2008 in Atimonan, Quezon.

Bangit said the three could attest in court to the extent of the NPA's multimillion-peso "revolutionary taxation" on telecommunication companies as well as the truthfulness of the directives to sabotage the operations of telecom firms that refused to pay the "revolutionary taxes."

The laptop, according to a source from the military, also contained specific details on the identities of businessmen and business companies who supported the rebel movement by paying the so-called "revolutionary tax" being imposed by the communist guerrillas.

Bangit claimed that the laptop had been providing valuable information that led to a series of successful anti-insurgency operations by government forces.