Rubout in Bicutan
The Arroyo regime used excessive force and violence in suppressing the prisoner revolt in Camp Bagong Diwa on March 15. Twenty-two detainees, most of them Moros accused of being Abu Sayyaf members were killed.
This, despite the fact that the prisoners were on the defensive, weak, hungry and under siege, and armed only with inferior weapons.
The Arroyo regime made sure that the known leaders of the Abu Sayyaf bandit group who were in collusion with officials of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) were killed in the attack directed by Gen. Angelo Reyes.
Among the dead were Abu Sayyaf leaders Alhamzer Limbong, Ghalib Andang and Nadzmie Saabdullah who had long been in collusion with the AFP and had direct knowledge of the involvement of high-ranking military officers in the Abu Sayyaf bandit group�s criminal activities.
The detainees seized three weapons from the prison guards. Two of the latter were killed in the initial exchange of fire, a situation pounced upon by the regime to justify the extrajudicial killing of the known Abu Sayyaf leaders and the public condemnation of other Moros illegally arrested and accused of being members of the group.
The regime dismissed the issues and demands put forth by the prison uprising such as the oppressed condition of Moro detainees and the illegal arrest of Moros in raids in Basilan as far back as 2001. Among the ordinary Moros illegally detained is a 14-year-old boy and 75-year-old Ahmad Upad, who was suffering from Alzheimer�s disease. Upad was killed in the rubout.
Government officials claimed that the prison rebels were being intransigent in order to justify the assault by 300 PNP Special Action Force (SAF) troops, all of them armed with high-powered weapons. In about two hours, the PNP-SAF slaughtered the defenseless detainees like chickens.
Worse, the military officials faced the media and proudly proclaimed how many they had killed, as if they had the right to exterminate the prisoners.
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