EDITORIAL - Porous jails

In December 2009, about 70 gunmen used sledgehammers and bolt cutters to smash into a portion of the concrete wall of the Basilan provincial jail, freeing 31 inmates, including 12 Abu Sayyaf bandits and five members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. A jail guard and a member of the MILF, which was blamed for the raid, were killed.

Among those who escaped were MILF commander Dan Asnawi and four of his men who had been detained for beheading 10 Marines in a 2007 encounter in Basilan. Armed groups in Mindanao have a record of raiding jails to spring their comrades, especially commanders. Government troops and jail personnel should have learned their lesson years ago and fortified their defenses against raids and mass escapes.

Yet here we are again, with gunmen freeing 28 detainees last Saturday from the Marawi provincial jail. Initial reports said some 50 members of Maute, a group that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, staged the raid, freeing eight of their comrades. Twenty other detainees took advantage of the raid and escaped.

The eight Maute members were arrested only last Aug. 22 after being caught in possession of guns and improvised explosive devices. Maute is rapidly gaining notoriety for bomb attacks and kidnappings in certain parts of Mindanao. With that kind of notoriety, security should have been tightened to ensure that the eight Maute members would stay in jail. If Marawi, a capital city, lacked the facilities for this, the eight could have been transferred to a more secure jail.

 Porous jails waste the time, effort and often the risks to life and limb that go into capturing high-value suspects. Sanctions must be imposed on those who might have been negligent or even complicit in the jailbreak. At the same time, authorities must conduct an inventory of the nation’s jail facilities to see where improvements are most needed. No anti-crime drive will succeed if the state’s capacity to keep suspects in jail is dismally inadequate.