A court in Basilan province has declared the Abu Sayyaf a terrorist organization in a ruling that provides the government with another legal weapon against bandits who have survived years of US-backed offensives.
The Sept. 7 ruling by the Isabela City Regional Trial Court (RTC) represents the first time that the 2007 Human Security Act has been applied to declare a criminal group a terrorist organization, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Friday.
Judge Danilo Bucoy of the Isabela RTC Branch 2 granted the DOJ’s application for the proscription of the Abu Sayyaf, saying terrorism was “essentially enshrined in the bandit group’s preamble.”
“After due notice and hearing, the organization commonly known as the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and/or Al-Harakatul Al-Islamiyya is hereby declared a terrorist organization,” Bucoy said in his ruling, a copy of which the DOJ released on Friday.
“Though the word terrorism is not stated in the preamble, its concept and essence are all over it and are therefore deemed written into it,” the ruling said.
De Lima lauds ruling
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima lauded the ruling, saying it would strengthen and extend the long arm of the law in going after the Abu Sayyaf.
“The proscription against the ASG as a terrorist organization which was granted by the Regional Trial Court of Basilan only formalizes the longstanding position of the government that the group is nothing more than a terrorist organization, thereby boosting the government’s effort to put an end to its existence and to capture all its members,” De Lima said.
She said the declaration would allow the government to file criminal charges not just against Abu Sayyaf members, but also against “supporters and financiers of the organization under the Human Security Act and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act.”
Enacted in 2012, the terrorism financing law supplemented the 2007 antiterror law, “criminalizing the financing of terrorism and related offenses, and by preventing and suppressing the commission of [those] offenses through freezing and forfeiture of properties or funds while protecting human rights.”
Boosts antiterror law
“It adds to the government’s legal arsenal in its fight against terrorism in the Philippines, specifically against the ASG and its allied organizations and individual supporters, both foreign and domestic,” De Lima said.
While the ruling was made by a Basilan court, the jurisprudence could be invoked nationally, bolstering the impact of the anti-terror law across the country, she said.
“[T]he RTC declaration applies all over the Philippines because the law does not distinguish what province the RTC is located so long as the court declares the proscription against a terror group, it is a proscription for purposes of enforcing the Human Security Act anywhere in the Philippines,” De Lima said. With a report from AP
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