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Much too pat

EDITORIAL

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11/17/2007

At times, it simply appears too pat to be true.

Just two days after the bomb blast at the southwing of the House of Representatives which killed Basilan Rep. Wahab Akbar and three other congressional staff and injuring some 13, among whom are two members of Congress, the Philippine National Police (PNP) declared the Batasan bombing case solved, after a shootout with alleged members of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) that resulted in the killing of three, including a woman, and the arrest of three more in the Payatas area.

Police linked the alleged Abu Sayyaf to the Batasan blast, and showed media certain license plates, one of which was an 8, which meant a member of Congress while the other was a motorcyle license plate that police said jibed with the bomb-laden motorcyle in the Batasan, plus an ID of a congressional aide of a deputy speaker of Mindanao, later found to be former Basilan Rep. Gerry Salappudin.

Everything appears to match up, and yet, one gets to wonder: why would the bombers have with them the “evidence?” If they are smart enough to come up with a sophisticated bomb, complete with a cellphone device to set off the explosive, wouldn’t they be just as smart to get rid of the evidence? For that matter, wouldn’t they have gone into hiding in a far-away place, not anywhere near the Batasan?

More to the point, the motorcycle license plate found in the alleged ASG bombers couldn’t have been found in the safehouse, as logically, it should have been found among the debris, or in the shattered motorcycle that carried the bomb. Why would the bombers bring this with them to their safehouse?

Also, why would the members of the bombing team be so stupid to keep an old ID which can easily be traced?

Nothing much has been said about the shootout itself, except what the police say it was: they were there to serve a warrant of arrest on these individuals for kidnapping, but as they resisted arrest, shooting broke out, with one Special Action Force member wounded. A woman was also killed, even if women are not allowed into the ASG. How old is this warrant, and why, all too suddenly, they were being served in that particular site, when they are supposed to be in Mindanao?

These questions crop up mainly because the PNP has little credibility left — if at all. Police are too well-known to plant evidence, for one. For another, just too many alleged rebels are being killed, after which the case is pronounced solved.

For yet another, both the police and military forces are known to have “assets” who, however, are at times pointed to as suspects, and then killed.

Then, too, there are also the usual suspects being rounded up and recycled whenever the police and military have to present suspects to pronounce a case solved in record time.

Less than an hour or so after the bomb blast, there was National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales claiming that he had received intelligence reports of a serious threat to the life of Akbar.

It didn’t take too long either for the police to quickly claim that the style of bombing was no different from the bombing in the past where the ASG was involved.

Immediately then, two things were quickly established by Malacañang and its police even before a probe started: that the bomb was intended for Akbar and that it was the ASG that did it. Funny, but that is how it has turned out to be.

Almost from the start, police immediately theorized that it was an assassination plot whose target was Akbar. The terrorist angle was quickly junked. This was followed by the serving of the arrest warrant against the alleged kidnappers who are alleged ASG members. All too suddenly, there was for all to see, the evidence needed to link these individuals to the bomb blast. Everything appears to be too coincidental. Why would the arrest warrant be served just then, if this was an old kidnapping case, and surprisingly, these suspects were right there.

This is not to say Salappudin and his former aide are to be cleared just like that. At the same time, it should be easy for the authorities to get to a former aide of Salappudin, as his address and all information would have been on record. And from the looks of it, the former Salappudin aide didn’t bother to hide anything.

It just doesn’t make sense, perhaps because everything is just too pat — much too pat, and because the PNP along with the GMA adminstration, has no crediblity.