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Monday March 14, 05:35 PM Abu Sayyaf Jailed for life
Philippine Police Prepare for Assault on Prison
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine police prepared on Monday to launch an assault on Islamic radicals holed up at a police detention center who snatched weapons from their guards and killed three of them in an escape attempt.
About 10 prisoners, including members of the Abu Sayyaf militant group, had occupied the second-story of a four-star police building in the Taguig suburb that was holding nearly 130 suspected Islamic militants.
Manila police chief Avelino Razon said there was a 2:00 p.m. (1 a.m. EST) deadline for the prisoners to surrender, although there was no sign they had done so.
Witnesses said heavily armed police, some wearing gas masks, were taking up positions near the building's entrances.
A jail guard told Reuters that one prisoner had stabbed a guard with a metal spike at breakfast before grabbing his gun and shooting dead two other guards.
Police said the group had at least three handguns and could have other weapons smuggled in by friends and relatives.
The prisoners, led by an Abu Sayyaf member suspected of beheading an American hostage in 2001, issued a demand for the government to speed up their trials, according to a Muslim official who spoke to them. Abu Sayyaf Jailed for life
The incident appears to be another embarrassment for the government after jail breaks by Islamic militants highlighted lax security at the country's detention centers .
It follows a series of bomb attacks on Valentine's Day that were claimed by the Abu Sayyaf, whose members have been fighting troops on their southern stronghold of Jolo island.
State prosecutor Leo Dacera told reporters that he had warned officials about an escape plot.
"We learned about this plot and we informed the jail officials about it three weeks ago," he said.
HIGH-PROFILE PRISONERS
Police said the prisoners appeared to be led by Alhamser Limbong, alias "Kosovo," who is on trial for the kidnapping of tourists and workers from the Dos Palmas beach resort in 2001 and who is suspected of beheading one of the American hostages.
He has also been charged with carrying out a bomb attack on a ferry near Manila last year that killed at least 116 people.
Another high-profile Abu Sayyaf member held at the camp is the one-legged Ghalib Andang, alias "Commander Robot," accused of leading the kidnapping of 21 people from Malaysia's Sipadan island in 2000.
"Not all of them are part of this plan," Razon told television. "A large proportion of them would like to surrender."
The militants contacted local radio by telephone and demanded to speak with Muslim officials.
"They want a speedy trial because some of them have been detained since 2001," Parouk Hussein, head of the Muslim autonomous region in southern Mindanao island, told reporters after talking by telephone to a spokesman for the prisoners.
The Philippines is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic but has a small Muslim minority. Most of the country's Muslims live in the south of the archipelago and some Islamic groups have been fighting for independence for decades.
Monday's attempted escape comes 11 months after a mass escape from a prison on southern Basilan Island. About 50 prisoners, including Abu Sayyaf members, overpowered their armed guards.
In 2003, a suspected bomb-maker for regional militant group Jemaah Islamiah, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, walked out of his cell at national police headquarters in Manila.
Al-Ghozi, an Indonesian, was killed at a police checkpoint in the southern Philippines three months later.