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| Southeast Asia |
| Matillano: Guard asleep when al-Ghozi escaped |
| 2003-07-16 |
| Director Eduardo Matillano, Criminal Investigation and Detection Group chief, admitted Wednesday that one police guard was asleep and a second was out shopping when convicted Jemaah Islamiyah bomber Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi broke out of his prison cell. "The guard who was supposed to be there 24 hours a day was sleeping in the other room," Matillano told reporters. "The lead guard was absent; he was not at his post at the time. He said he had gone somewhere to buy something and saw nothing unusual when he came back." Al-Ghozi was serving a 15-year prison sentence for procuring explosives after having confessed to his role in the December 2000 bombings that claimed 22 lives in Manila as well as the plot to bomb Western embassies in Singapore. The Indonesian national was being held in the prison housed in the national police headquarters awaiting the outcome of a government petition seeking to transfer him to another jail. "There were some lapses on the part of security," Matillano said. Investigators found the jail cell was "intact and sustained no damage," with padlocks still in place, the police official said. Then how did he get out? The escaped convicts walked along the main hallway, down the stairs to the ground floor and left through the main gate. Al-Ghozi escaped with two of the three Filipino Abu Sayyaf guerrillas -- on trial for kidnapping -- who shared his four-person cell. The fourth inmate informed guards early Monday morning that there had been a prison break but they did not believe him as the padlock on the cell remained intact. "Guard, my cellmates broke out!" "Shut up, I’m trying to sleep." It took five hours for the guards to discover the jailbreak, when the cell was physically inspected. "Hey, where’d everybody go?" The guards were also remiss in their duties to conduct an hourly headcount of inmates under their care. Rather than physically inspecting the cells and recording their findings in the prison logbook, they just signed the logbook without checking, a grim-faced Matillano said. That’s the first lesson I learned in the service, never, never sign for anything without checking to see if it was really there. Roberto Principe, the sergeant of the guards, and guard detail Ronald Palmares have been restricted to quarters and charged with "infidelity in the custody of prisoners," Matillano said. Criminal charges are also being prepared against their superiors, he added. I still think somebody got paid off (how did he get out of a locked cell), but it could be just total incompatance. |
| Posted by:Steve |