Moro detainees ask: What about us?

PRESUMPTIVE President-elect Rodrigo Duterte talks to reporters late on Saturday at “After Dark,” a bar that has become his favorite hangout since it opened. A barrage of suggestions, including those of Moro groups seeking the release of wrongly detained terror suspects, is keeping the wish list for Duterte’s administration long. NICO ALCONABA/INQUIRER MINDANAO

DAVAO CITY—Moro human rights groups are urging presumptive President-elect Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte to extend the amnesty he is offering to political prisoners belonging to the Left also to Moro inmates who had been falsely accused of belonging to the local terrorist group Abu Sayyaf.

The Moro rights groups Suara Bangsamoro and Kawagib said hundreds of Moros have been picked up and jailed since 2001 when the government started a crackdown on the Abu Sayyaf and falsely accused Moro civilians of involvement in terrorism.

Amirah Ali Lidasan, national president of the Suara Bangsamoro, said in a statement that the crackdown has led to the arrest of more than 200 Moro men from Basilan, Sulu and Zamboanga City.

“We urge the new President to include Moro prisoners falsely accused as local terrorists in his plan to grant general, unconditional and omnibus amnesty to political prisoners,” said the statement signed by Jerome Succor Aba, Suara Bangsamoro spokesperson and Bai Ali Indayla, secretary general of Kawagib.

Of the 94 Moro prisoners languishing in jail in the last 15 years while awaiting trial, 32 had been documented and reported as “tortured and forced to sign documents admitting they were members of the Abu Sayyaf Group,” said Lidasan.

The group pointed to the 103rd Brigade of the Army as the culprit, a unit then headed by General Hermogenes Esperon, who has just been named the next national security adviser.

The group also asked Duterte to review the anti-terror policy of the government, citing studies pointing out its faults, among them the arrest of innocent men and the mad dash for bounty offered by the US government for the capture or killing of terrorist leaders.

“For 15 years, more than 94 Moro prisoners have been awaiting the final decision of the local courts whether to charge them with kidnapping along with the real Abu Sayyaf men or to release them due to lack of evidence,” Lidasan said.

The Moro groups prodded the Department of Justice to review the terrorism case which was filed at the Pasig Regional Trial Court in February 2013. Senior State Prosecutor Peter Ong started a series of consultations in May to November 2013 as part of the review, where six witnesses, two of them state witnesses and a confirmed member of the Abu Sayyaf involved in kidnapping cases, were presented.

Of the cases of 94 prisoners being reviewed, state witness Ustadz Mohammad Umog identified only 12 actual Abu Sayyaf members. Another state witness, Absar Ismael, confirmed only five.

The review conducted by Ong concluded that among 12 men tagged as members of the Abu Sayyaf, six are innocent.

Ong had promised the victims’ families he would recommend the innocent men’s release by December 2013 or early 2014, but when Leila de Lima resigned as justice secretary to run for senator, “no release was made,” said Lidasan.

She added that De Lima left the DOJ without resolving the case of Muhammadiya Hamja, a farmer arrested during the crackdown in 2001, released in 2003 after proven innocent and arrested again in 2006 for the same case.

“As long as the DOJ memorandum and the reward system remain, more innocent Moros, most of whom are poor, will be arrested and paraded as terrorists,” Lidasan said, referring to the DOJ memorandum that also classified as terrorists persons who aid terror groups. The enforcement of the memorandum, said Lidasan, has been indiscriminate and targeted innocent civilians, too.

She also cited recent arrests involving jeepney dispatcher Aldimar Sangkula Jumurana in Zamboanga on April 2 this year and mango vendor Radjan Sahiddan, who was arrested in November last year.

Tagged by an intelligence agent as the unidentified suspects in a case against Abu Sayyaf members, both were arrested and shipped to Metro Manila and are now being detained at Camp Bagong Diwa where many Abu Sayyaf suspects are being held.

The group is also seeking the review of the case of 266 Moro men and women who were accused of being members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) involved in the 2013 Zamboanga siege and are now detained also in Camp Bagong Diwa. Germelina Lacorte, Inquirer Mindanao