THE usual peace and quiet on a Sunday morning in Metro Manila was shattered by the news that Camp Crame’s VIP detainee former senator Leila de Lima was taken hostage by one of three prisoners trying to escape from the highly secured Custodial Center of the Philippine National Police.
Hours later, the three supposed escapees, who were identified as Abu Sayyaf members, were dead and De Lima emerged safe and unhurt from her ordeal.
It was Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos who recounted the incident to the public. He said that at 6 a.m. on October 9, Police Cpl. Roger Agustin was bringing breakfast to the detainees when one of them stabbed him repeatedly with a fork. That inmate then opened the cell of two others as they tried to escape, not knowing there was a sniper above.
‘Senator Bato should have known that an escape try and worse, a hostage-taking incident, should not have occurred inside a jail facility if it is really secured.’
Two of those inmates, Arnel Cabintoy and Idang Susukan, were shot dead escaping while the third inmate, Feliciano Sulayao Jr., ran to De Lima’s cell thinking that it was the exit, then held her hostage with a knife. Sulayao tied and blindfolded the former senator, and negotiated with police, at one time asking for a Hummer and a helicopter.
It was sheer grit and presence of mind of Col. Mark Pespes that ended the hostage incident and saved the life of De Lima. One bullet also saved the honor and reputation of the PNP, its chief General Rodolfo Azurin Jr., and the President. Had Pespes failed and De Lima was killed, it would have been both a national and international embarrassment.
The former senator, a leading critic of the drug war of both former President Rodrigo Duterte and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has been detained at the Custodial Center in Camp Crame since 2017, on drug charges.
Pespes, the director of the PNP Headquarters Support Service, will surely get a promotion, along with the police snipers who shot dead the escaping inmates. Their timely and decisive action saved the day for the PNP and they deserve their promotion.
Funny, however, is a comment on the hostage-taking incident from an “expert.” Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, a former PNP chief, said the Custodial Center is the most secure place in the camp, and that’s the reason why the daring escape was foiled. Senator Bato should have known that an escape try and worse, a hostage-taking incident, should not have occurred inside a jail facility if it is really secured. Being inside Camp Crame, the custodial center is supposed to be a jail inside a jail, remember?
While we are at it, the PNP Custodial Center had this unsavory reputation of being the venue of at least two daring escapes by top leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army. This is where NPA chief of staff Rolly Kintanar and his wife escaped on Nov. 12, 1988. CPP First Lady Wilma Tiamzon, head of the party’s National Finance Commission, also escaped from this detention cell on Dec. 26, 1989 passing through the gate and pretending to be one of the guests of detainees.
This Sunday morning incident should be a wake-up call for the PNP, and since this is a jail matter, for the Department of Interior and Local Government too.
