Heinous details of the Camp Bagong Diwa massacre
The horrible details behind the Camp Bagong Diwa massacre of March 15 are slowly being revealed despite attempts to hide them from the public. It has come to light that the massacre was planned, directly ordered and led by Gen. Angelo Reyes. This confirms views that the killings were aimed at eliminating prominent leaders of the Abu Sayyaf bandit group who were known accomplices of military officials in their criminal and terrorist activities.
The details were disclosed by no less than the prisoners who survived the massacre, a number of policemen who joined the assault, and reporters cordoned off by the police.
Many of those in the area at the time recounted that the shots they heard all came from the side of the assaulting government troops. The number of prisoner-casualties far outnumbered the number of firearms recovered from the detainees. Most of those killed were innocent detainees and were not involved in the attempted jailbreak.
To justify the excessive use of force, police planted guns, including a shiny .45 cal. pistol reportedly placed over the body of Ghalib Andang alias Commander Robot, one of the victims of the massacre. Earlier reports indicated that the prisoners had seized only three pistols from prison guards.
Accounts given by survivors to organizations conducting a medical mission to attend to the wounded revealed that Special Action Force (SAF) operatives relentlessly shot at the prisoners even when they were already lying face down on the ground. The SAF elements shouted, "You Muslims are all alike!" According to the Moro-Christian People's Alliance (MCPA), over a hundred prisoners were wounded and needed medical treatment.
One survivor told his wife that the assaulting SAF elements gathered the known Abu Sayyaf leaders and lined them up before shooting them, proving that what took place was not a firefight but an extrajudicial killing.
After attacking the prisoners, SAF members repeatedly punched, kicked and cursed the survivors, paraded them naked except for their briefs and exposed them in the hot sun for almost two hours. The government troopers tortured the prisoners into admitting involvement in the attempted jailbreak, threatening them with death if they refused to do so.
The Camp Bagong Diwa massacre was directly led by Gen. Angelo Reyes, currently the secretary of the Department of the Interior and Local Government, and believed to be an accomplice of the Abu Sayyaf in a number of terrorist bombings in Mindanao and other areas. It was Reyes who handled negotiations with the prisoners and ordered the assault.
Reyes took advantage of the prisoner uprising to liquidate leaders of the Abu Sayyaf bandit group. He and other senior military, police and government officials have long been dying to silence the detained Abu Sayyaf leaders for fear that the latter would disclose the full extent of their collusion with high-ranking officials of the military, police and civilian bureaucracy and even US military agents in criminal activities such as terrorist bombings and kidnapping-for-ransom.
Different personalities and organizations have repeatedly exposed this collusion. One such expos� was made by former Abu Sayyaf hostage Gracia Burnham who revealed that it was the AFP that supplied the bandit group with guns, ammunition, medicines, rice and other food supplies.
The military kept trying to muzzle the jailed Abu Sayyaf leaders. Thus, their outrage when Ghalib Andang disclosed the collusion by a number of government and military officials with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in carrying out terrorist activities in Mindanao. Andang revealed that they staged the kidnapping of Jeffrey Schilling in 2000, saying the American was actually a CIA operative sent there to train the Abu Sayyaf.
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