MANILA, PHILIPPINES (AP) – Human rights activists pressed their call yesterday for the immediate release of a former Philippine opposition senator after she was taken hostage in a rampage by three militants in a failed attempt to escape from a maximum-security jail.
Police killed three Islamic State group-linked militants behind Sunday’s violence in which a police officer was stabbed and former Senator Leila de Lima briefly taken hostage.
The militants tried to escape from the jail for high-profile inmates at the national police headquarters in metropolitan Manila, said the police.
National police chief General Rodolfo Azurin Jr acknowledged there were security lapses in the detention centre and said its commander has been removed as part of an investigation.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch separately expressed deep alarm over the violence and the hostage-taking of de Lima. “That she has had to endure this traumatising and frightening experience on top of being arbitrarily detained for over five years now is the height of outrage, negligence and injustice,” Amnesty International Philippine Director Butch Olano said.
About two dozen supporters held a protest for de Lima, who was brought to a metropolitan Manila trial court yesterday for a hearing, which was postponed.
“We condemned what happened yesterday,” said protester Charito del Carmen. “It’s painful for us because if she got killed what would happen to the fight for justice that we’ve been waging for her?”
One of the three inmates stabbed a police officer who was delivering breakfast after dawn in an open area, where inmates can exercise outdoors. A guard in a sentry tower fired warning shots then shot and killed two of the prisoners when they refused to yield, police said.
The third inmate ran to de Lima’s cell and briefly held her hostage, Azurin said.
De Lima, 63, told investigators the hostage-taker tied her hands and feet, blindfolded her and pressed a pointed weapon to her chest and demanded access to journalists and a military aircraft to take him to southern Sulu province, where the militant group Abu Sayyaf has long had a presence.
The man constantly threatened to kill her until he was gunned down by a police negotiator, she told investigators.
