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Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Man mistaken for Sayyaf chief to sue cops
ZAMBOANGA CITY -- A man wrongfully arrested by the police in the southern Philippines threatened to sue the authorities for violating his rights and demanded an apology from officials.
Antonio Gara was arrested by the police on Saturday in Kitabog village in Titay town in Zamboanga Sibugay province after they accused him of being a senior leader of the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group.
Police had mistaken Gara for Radulan Sahiron, who has a $5 million dollars bounty on his head and is wanted by both the United States and the Philippine governments for the series of terrorism and killings in Mindanao.
Gara said he pitied his family members who were traumatized by his arrest. He also said his family asked him to sue the three policemen who arrested him and their superior who ordered the arrest.
During the arrest, Gara said he tried to prove to the police officers that he was not Sahiron but the policemen just ignored him.
He said the three policemen "pointed their guns at him and his family, dragged him to a van and slapped him repeatedly when he resisted."
Gara said his wife suffered hypertension while his four children could not sleep well because of the incident. He said he failed to get the names of the arresting officers who were in police uniforms but without nameplates.
He was arrested when he and his family were about to leave their house. He said he was blindfolded when brought to Dipolog City.
"I was really traumatized," he said in a radio interview.
A man who accompanied National Police Chief Arturo Lomibao to Mindanao to identify the captive said Gara was not the Abu Sayyaf leader.
He told police that although Gara is Sahiron's look-alike, the captured trader has a missing left arm unlike the bandit leader who lost his right arm during a past encounter with the military and police authorities when he was then a member of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
Lomibao ordered Gara's immediate release and apologized to the businessman. He also apologized to the public for the police's "unintentional lapse" in the incident.
The PNP chief is leading an investigation as to who gave President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the wrong information on the arrest. He assured that the police officers involved in the fiasco will be punished.
The national police chief said the erroneous information was relayed to him by Senior Superintendent Rodolfo Mendoza of the Zamboanga Sibugay police who had been informed by his men who carried out the arrest.
Arroyo had lauded on Saturday security forces for arresting Sahiron.
Police officials later clarified that they arrested the wrong man and have freed him.
The military said the one-armed Sahiron is hiding in the southern island of Jolo, not in Titay town. Sahiron, a former commander of the MNLF, lost his right arm at the height of the secessionist rebellion in the 1970s in Jolo.
Gara also lost his left arm in an accident many years ago, his wife said.
Sahiron joined the Abu Sayyaf in the 1990s and became one of the group's top commander for Jolo. Sahiron was also implicated in the kidnappings of 21 mostly Asian and Western holiday-makers in a raid on the resort island of Sipadan, off Sabah, Malaysia in 2001.
His group was also tagged in the kidnappings of four Hong Kong and Malaysian fishery workers off Jolo in 1998 and dozens of Filipino missionaries on the island.
Washington put up the $5 million bounty for Sahiron's capture, aside from P5 million from the government.
Security officials described Sahiron as a notorious Abu Sayyaf leader, who often travels in Jolo's dense jungle astride on a horse--a rifle on his left side and a pistol on the other. (Al Jacinto/Jonathan Fernandez/Sunnex)
(November 8, 2005 issue)
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