Weak cases sets tough Mindanao drug traffickers loose

COTABATO CITY ---Unless law enforcers learn how to appropriately establish cases against drug-traffickers, Malacañang’s recent feats in its anti-narcotics campaign in Maguindanao might all turn to waste. There were recent cases lawmen endorsed to prosecutors that got dismissed for lack of even the most basic documents corroborating the scientific authenticity of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) and the veracity of ownership of unlicensed firearms recovered from offenders.Prosecutors would need certification from the Philippine National Police indicating that it has no record or ballistics data, for each unlicensed gun or a cache seized from a lone suspect or from groups, for litigation purposes.Documents detailing government regulations on possession of explosives either for agricultural, mining or military use are also needed in judicial proceedings, prosecutors in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) told and//www.ndbcnews.com.ph/ www.ndbcnews.com.ph Monday.A check at the offices of state prosecutors in ARMM provinces showed that there were drug cases filed by the police, as a result of supposedly well-planned dragnets, but did not have even a tiny speck of crystalline shabu as primary evidence. We cannot blame the courts if for lack of these requisites cases get dismissed, lawyer Rohaira Lao, provincial prosecutor of Maguindanao, said Monday.She said she has handled complaints on possession of shabu that were not supported with a laboratory study on the evidence confiscated from offenders. We can’t do magic to pin people down. We here are ready to do our best in prosecuting law offenders but we also need very strong pieces of evidence needed to prosecute them, Lao said.About ten years ago, a student of the Cotabato City State Polytechnic College named Guiday Muntassir got exonerated from an attempt to set off an improvised explosive device in one of the offices of the school after a local Army bomb disposal unit declined to certify that the IED they have recovered underneath a table inside the room the suspect had attempted to bomb was real and deadly.Some members of the media community in Central Mindanao found out that Muntassir was being trained then in fabrication of IEDs by the Indonesian terrorist Taufek Refke, a member of the Jemaah Islamiya who had stayed for about two years in a rented house in San Pablo area in Cotabato City.Refke was arrested by agents from the PNP’s national headquarters in Camp Crame at the premises of the Sardonyx Hotel in Cotabato City a year after Muntassir’s botched bombing attempt inside the campus of the state college where he had studied briefly along with other young local recruits of the Indonesian bomb maker.ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, chairman of the inter-agency regional peace and order council, said he is ready to help organize case workshops among lawyers in different agencies under his office and local police intelligence units and investigators in the region’s 116 towns. This can be a capacity-building program, Hataman said.Functions and powers of the PNP are not devolved to the ARMM government but Hataman exercises ministerial supervision of police units in the autonomous region as an elected regional governor.The Department of Justice is also among the agencies Malacañang did not devolve to the ARMM whose charter, the Republic Act 9054, only fully transferred the functions to the regional government of the trade and industry, agriculture, health, interior and local government, natural resources, agrarian reform and social welfare departments. We in the executive department of ARMM can help initiate workshops to upgrade the capability of police investigators in building airtight cases against law offenders, Hataman said Monday. Hataman is surrounded by subordinate-lawyers in his office, among them regional officials Mimbalawag Mangutara, Jr., Laisa Masuhud Alamia, Rasol Mitmug, Jr., and Kirby Abdullah, who is the region’s present DILG secretary.There are also other lawyers serving as officials of different ARMM agencies and support offices under the Office of the Regional Governor, touted as Little Malacañang of the autonomous region.Abdullah said there is indeed an immediate need for workshops meant to foster strong cooperation among prosecutors and police units in the autonomous region.The ARMM covers Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, which are both in mainland Mindanao, and the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, common bastions of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front.Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur are also hotbeds of Islamic militancy, where there are extremist groups, the Dawlah Islamiya, also known as the Maute terror Group and the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters sowing havoc in far-flung areas.Criminal charges hastily filed against many members of both groups are now pending in courts, mostly premised only on sworn statements corroborating contentions that they were either involved in deadly bombings, or implicated in multiple murders, arson, robbery and extortion offenses as offshoot of their brigand activities.