MANILA, 19 July 2003 — Hermogenes Ebdane yesterday offered to resign as director general of the Philippine National Police (PNP) chief amid an outrage over the escape of a top terrorist suspect from a maximum security prison.
But President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo rejected the resignation and charged Ebdane instead to personally lead the search and recapture of Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, an Indonesian member of the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist group who had confessed his involvement in a series of bombings that killed several people in metropolitan Manila in December 2000.
“The PNP chief will lead a task force exclusively for Al-Ghozi’s manhunt. We will not stop until the terrorist leader is accounted for,” the president announced in a speech at the Mindanao Island Conference held at the Century Park Hotel in Manila.
Earlier in the day, Malaca?ang officials alerted reporters on a “big announcement” that the president was going to make about Ebdane at 6 p.m. This led to speculation that Arroyo was going to fire the PNP chief, under whose watch Al-Ghozi and several other prominent detainees escaped.
The clamor for Ebdane’s head continued, with the Makati Business Club saying that Al-Ghozi’s “effortless escape” had caused “inestimable embarrassment to the country and concern and friction among our allies.” The president welcomed the help of the United States and other countries in the hunt for Al-Ghozi.
Al-Ghozi and two suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf kidnap-terror gang escaped on Wednesday from a heavily secured detention center at the PNP headquarters, Camp Crame, in Manila’s suburb of Quezon City.
The confessed Jemaah Islamiah bomb maker was serving a jail term for illegal possession of explosives and falsifying travel documents. Police officers investigating the escape shifted the blame yesterday to a defective jail cell which could be opened without using keys. “Now, we can attribute the escape not only to the human element but also to the physical defect or the structural defect of the detention cell,” Criminal Investigation Division chief Eduardo Matillano told reporters.
Officials also said the escape may have been done with the possible help of prison guards.
Al-Ghozi and his cohorts were housed at the second floor of a 15-year-old building inside Camp Crame.
During a re-enactment yesterday, investigators demonstrated how easily the jail cells could be opened even without removing the heavy-duty padlocks that secured the latch of the iron doors.
Al-Ghozi, who shared a cell with a width of about three meters (9 feet) and length of seven meters (7 feet) with an Abu Sayyaf member, may have gone past three sleeping jail guards in an adjacent room, investigators said. The fugitives then could have walked out of the building and scaled a concrete fence out of the compound, they said.
President Arroyo, humiliated and angered by the escape, had formed an independent commission to investigate the escape.
So far, only Sedfrey Ordo?ez, a former justice secretary and envoy, and Justice Secretary Simeon Datumanong have been named to the body, as chair and member respectively.
“One immediate effect has been the return of negative travel advisories on the Philippines, which have adverse impact on business-related travel as well as tourism in the country,” the MBC said in a statement.
The president said her administration was “not giving any false assurances to our people or to the international community.”
“But we assure (you) that the government will leave no stone unturned in the manhunt and investigation of the circumstances that led to the escape,” she said, adding:
“We have played a very strong role in the global fight against terrorism and the capture of Al-Ghozi was part of that commitment,” she said. “We are equally committed to bring him back to justice and to work with other nations, including the United States, to stop terrorism in whatever form and wherever it may be.” (Additional input from agencies)
