BM Piñol wants rewards for escapees, transfer of provincial jail

NORTH COTABATO – A provincial board member on Friday recommended the allocation of rewards for the capture of each of the 116 inmates who escaped from a controversial jail in the province.
At least 43 of the 158 inmates who bolted from their cells in the North Cotabato provincial jail in Kidapawan City when gunmen stormed the facility midnight Tuesday had been captured while eight others were killed by pursuing soldiers and police for resisting arrest.Board Member Socrates Piñol also urged North Cotabato’s acting governor, Shirlyn Macasarte, to immediately work out the transfer of the provincial jail anywhere far from the vicinity of the provincial capitol in Barangay Amas in Kidapawan City.The jailbreak on midnight Thursday was the third in the same penitentiary in about a decade.A number of inmates, among them suspects in deadly bombings in the province, were set free by gunmen who stormed the facility in two prior attacks that challenged Malacañang’s diplomatic overtures with southern Moro communities.A jail guard and a barangay councilor also got killed in this week’s incident, also involving guerillas clad in camouflage uniforms and armed with assault rifles and launchers for B-40 anti-rockets and 40 millimeter grenade projectiles.Beleaguered jail warden Supt. Peter Bongat said the gunmen apparently rescued from detention several cohorts being prosecuted for a series of bombings in the province.The jail is within short distance from the office of the North Cotabato governor and the provincial police office, where there are elite Special Action Force commandos, ready for any rapid tactical engagement.

Piñol said he has informed Macasarte of his recommendations via a formal letter he sent to the governor’s office. I hope we can pool together our attention and efforts towards that goal, Piñol said.Piñol said for security reasons, the provincial jail should immediately be relocated to another site somewhere far from the provincial capitol in Kidapawan City.
The landscape in the surroundings of the jail is not conducive to concealment of high-profile inmates, he said Friday.He said there are many strategic sites in the outskirts of Kidapawan City, the capital of North Cotabato, and in nearby municipalities in the province ideal for a provincial jail.He said he will present his proposals to the provincial board and also convince his colleagues to help in securing rewards for the capture of inmates.

The present North Cotabato provincial jail is originally a 1970-era school campus converted into a detention facility.Authorities have never improved the structural designs of the buildings inside the jail to beef up security even after the two earlier attacks by gunmen.Besides the three assaults on the jail in a period of about ten years, the police detention facility in Kidapawan City was also attacked more than three years ago by followers of a detainee, Commander Lastikman, whose real name is Datucan Samad.The followers of Samad tried to breach through the gate of the Kidapawan City jail to set him free, but guards on duty opened fire, forcing them to retreat.

The ensuing encounter left two civilians and a responding Red Cross volunteer dead and more than a dozen injured, some of them firemen who rushed to the scene from a nearby fire station.
The attackers detonated improvised explosive devices in the surroundings of the jail as they fled bringing with them no fewer than five wounded companions.Piñol said he is optimistic Local Government Secretary Ismael Sueno, who hails from South Cotabato, and President Rodrigo Duterte will help them address the security concerns besetting the provincial jail. We have a local government secretary from South Cotabato and a President who is from Davao City. They both surely know the deeper intricacies of the issue, Piñol said.Meanwhile, Chief Inspector Joyce Birrey, spokesperson of the North Cotabato provincial police, said joint military and police teams will continue the search for the missing inmates in the outskirts of Kidapawan City and nearby towns.
As of Thursday night, 43 of the 158 inmates had been accounted for, eight of them killed by pursuing security forces while the rest were captured one after another with the help of local officials and barangay leaders in towns around Kidapawan City.Birrey said 24 of those returned to the provincial jail were corned in an agricultural district in Kabacan town by a team of combined soldiers and policemen led by Mayor Herlo Guzman.