GMA doubts Abu claim on ferry

The terrorist Abu Sayyaf group’s claim that it bombed the SuperFerry 14 does not hold water as far as President Arroyo is concerned.

The President said yesterday that the Islamist group could not possibly claim responsibility for the "sabotage" of the SuperFerry 14 that was gutted by fire before dawn Friday, leaving two dead, seven injured and 186 missing — including passengers who may not have been listed on the ship’s manifest — because the group has long been decimated.

The President issued the statement as the search for the ship’s missing passengers continued.

Mrs. Arroyo warned the public that terrorist groups like the Abu Sayyaf might be taking advantage of the accident "to propagandize their evil cause" by making false claims to stir "panic" and make their group seem more powerful than it actually is.

"Up to this point, there is nothing in the investigation that shows this was a terrorist incident," she said. "The (Philippine) Coast Guard (PCG) confirms this and is on top of the in-depth probe."

The President earlier tasked the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), of which the PCG is an attached agency, to supervise the inter-agency investigations into the SuperFerry 14 mishap.

"We will establish the cause of the fire and undertake the necessary measures to ensure it is not repeated," the President vowed. "We will get to the root cause of this specific matter in due time... In the meantime, tight security in our ports will be maintained to effectively screen out terrorists or bombs from our ships."

In her official statement, the President dismissed the claims made by Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Solaiman that the Sulu-based bandit group carried out a bombing that triggered fire on the decks of SuperFerry 14.

Meanwhile, presidential candidate Sen. Panfilo Lacson said he doubts the Abu Sayyaf’s claims that they bombed the SuperFerry 14.

At a luncheon press conference hosted by Sen. Manuel Villar and his wife, Las Piñas Rep. Cynthia Villar, Lacson said the Abu Sayyaf is already a "spent force."

"The force of the Abu Sayyaf is already diminished. They always claim responsibility for several incidents in the country without any basis," he said.

The Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (KNP), meanwhile, chided the President for immediately dismissing the Abu Sayyaf’s claim that it bombed the SuperFerry 14.

Malacañang should look deeper into the sea mishap, KNP spokesman Miguel Romero said in a statement. The President, he said, "should take a break from her excessive campaigning so she and defense officials could adequately address the possible resurgence of terrorism in the country following the Abu Sayyaf’s claim that it was responsible for last week’s ferry disaster."

After launching an all-out war against the Abu Sayyaf after assuming office in January 2001, the President ordered the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to intensify their crackdown on the bandits, whose lairs include the southern islands of Basilan and Sulu.

This crackdown resulted in the fall of many ranking Abu Sayyaf leaders — who were either killed, like Abu Sabaya, or captured, like Ghalib Andang alias Commander Robot, who was arrested last December.

In an interview with Radio Mindanao Network, Solaiman said the ferry fire was caused by the detonation of a bomb planted by Abu Sayyaf operatives on the ship. Solaiman said the bombing was conducted in retaliation for the maltreatment of Muslims and the rape of Muslim women by government troops in Mindanao.

"The calls to media, text messages and rumors are the work of pranksters," the President said, adding that "these could also be coming from the terrorists themselves, but only as an afterthought to propagandize their evil cause and instigate fear."

"What is important is to find those missing and I assure their families that this will be our current priority," she said, even as search and rescue operations have become search and recovery.

Police intelligence reports had previously cited inter-island ferries, the chief means of transport in the sprawling archipelago, as a potential Abu Sayyaf target.

After claiming the ferry mishap as the handiwork of the Abu Sayyaf, Solaiman also said this was just one of a series of planned attacks by the bandit group.

The Abu Sayyaf earlier sent extortion letters threatening to hijack WG&A’s SuperFerry ships and hold the passengers hostage.

Buttressing the Palace’s dismissal of Solaiman’s claims, military spokesman Lt. Col. Daniel Lucero said, "none of the injured suffered any shrapnel wounds" that would indicate the detonation of a bomb.

Lucero said Navy frogmen who searched the cabins of the gutted vessel failed to find any pieces of "twisted metal," which, he said, would indicate a bomb explosion.

The Abu Sayyaf is responsible for a string of bombings and kidnappings and has been linked by both Manila and Washington to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network.

PCG chief Read Adm. Arturo Gosingan said over ABS-CBN television that, "as of this time, rescue teams have entered the ship. So far, the only things they turned up were some pieces of baggage."

Meanwhile, rescue divers returned to the battered hulk of the SuperFerry 14, which was lying half-submerged off the shore of Agwawan beach in Mariveles town, Bataan, to search for the missing passengers, although chances of finding additional survivors were dim.

The waters of Manila Bay off Corregidor island, where the ship burned, are extremely treacherous due to sudden and steep drops in the sea bed that cause strong rip tides.

Most of the ship’s 899 passengers and crew survived the mishap by getting into lifeboats or jumping into the sea. Witnesses reported that a large explosion triggered the blaze.

PCG Commodore Wilfredo Tamayo said divers, medical teams and fire-fighters probing the wreckage of the 10, 192-ton, steel-hulled ferry in the shallow waters of Mariveles Bay yesterday have not yet found any human remains.

"There’s twisted metal hanging everywhere," Tamayo said. "Every time (the rescue teams) move, it’s falling on them. We’ll have to use special equipment to clear and unravel the debris."

"We don’t want to give up hope because there are stories of miraculous survival," he said.

"When we break the glass, there’s the excitement that I can find somebody, but there’s been nothing and I’m frustrated," PCG diver Cmdr. Alfredo Santos said. "We’re looking for survivors but now, even one body will make it worthwhile."

The Office of Civil Defense (OCD) said rescuers failed to penetrate the inner parts of the ferry to search for the dead and missing and to see where the fire originated to determine the real cause of the blaze.

Gosingan said the WG&A marine protest, the marine equivalent of an incident report, indicated that the blaze began just past midnight Friday and an abandon ship order was given by Capt. Ceferino Menzo shortly after the fire broke out. PCG probers have yet to talk to Menzo.

"The content of the marine protest is everything that is known already and has come out in the papers," PCG deputy commandant for operations Rear Adm. Danilo Abinoja said.

Abinoja heads the 10-man Special Board of Marine Inquiry (SBMI) tasked with investigating the SuperFerry 14 fire. As of press time, divers have searched 70 percent of the ship, which was deliberately ran aground to keep it from sinking. The remaining unsearched area is the A-deck, believed to be the fire’s point of origin.

Liability

Meanwhile, WG&A, the SuperFerry 14’s owner, may be held liable for gross negligence and civil damages and may have to compensate the victims of the fire aboard the ill-fated vessel.

However, Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño said a full investigation of the ship fire must first be completed before such liabilities on the part of WG&A can be determined.

Zuño said there is still no evidence of either negligence on the ship owner’s part or a terrorist attack.

At the very least, Zuño said, the owner of the vessel would have to face civil liabilities to the passengers who survived and the families of those who died in the mishap.

Article 1756 of the Civil Code of the Philippines provides that: "In case of death or of injuries to passengers through negligence or willful acts of the former’s employees..." the ship’s owners are liable for their employees’ transgression "although such employees may have acted beyond the scope of their authority or in violation of the orders" of the vessel’s owner.

Authorities said it is possible that some of those listed as missing may have escaped and returned home but failed to contact the authorities.

Most of those listed as missing were billeted in the tourist section of the vessel, according to The STAR’s interviews with relatives of the missing SuperFerry 14 passengers, who have anxiously awaited word of their loved ones’ fates in the covered gym of the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) in Port Area, Manila.

"Right now, we just rely on the daily press releases of WG&A and the PCG," 56-year-old Eda Magin said. Her mother-in-law, Luz, was listed among those missing in the aftermath of the ferry fire. "We have nowhere to ask," she said. "If we can only know the rooms where the survivors were billeted, then we can ask them what happened to our loved ones."

Magin said her mother-in-law was carrying P120,000, her seaman son’s compensation pay for contracting an illness while working on a cargo ship. "We don’t care about the money," Magin said. "What we’re after now is the fate of (our loved ones)."

The relatives of the missing are being given food and sleeping accommodations by WG&A and the PCG.

Mass for the safe return of the missing and the souls of the deceased is celebrated daily at the PPA gym. Nuns are providing spiritual counseling for distraught relatives of the missing.

Photographers and reporters have been banned from entering the PPA gym and taking pictures or interviewing the relatives in consideration of their trauma and stress. 

PCG spokesman Armand Balilo said that while rescue divers have penetrated almost half of the ferry wreckage, "our search and rescue operations were hampered by tons of debris and cargo, which blocked the inside of the vessel."

In Balanga City, Bataan police director Senior Superintendent Sahiron Dula Salim said the four-day search operations imposed on all 11 coastal towns in the province have proven fruitless.

Salim said passengers who could swim and had jumped off the ship could have survived the treacherous waters off Mariveles, but added that anybody left on the ship since the fire broke out would not have survived the oven-like heat of the wreckage for four days. Those who had not drowned in the strong currents of Manila Bay should also have been rescued by this time by the PCG, the police maritime and Bantay Dagat teams.

Salim also said that local fishermen have been salvaging boxes of rum and other liquor off the Mariveles coastline — possibly cargo tossed off the ship by the SuperFerry 14 crew.

Crackdown continues

In Zamboanga City, the AFP has stepped up its already intense campaign against the Abu Sayyaf, AFP Southern Command (Southcom) chief Lt. Gen. Roy Kyamko said.

"I have received reports on the whereabouts of Abu Sayyaf leaders (including) Khaddafi Janjalani, Isnilon Hapilon (and) Abu Solaiman," Kyamko said.

Solaiman and Hapilon, he added, are hiding in a coastal village in Zamboanga City, where they may be plotting kidnappings and bomb attacks, he said.

Kyamko also said Janjalani was monitored as having returned to Central Mindanao after he made a secret landing on the East coast of Zamboanga last December.

"The tracking and monitoring of these (Abu Sayyaf) leaders is continuing and they will soon be captured just like the other Abu Sayyaf leaders," Kyamko said.

The Abu Sayyaf, he said, "is a degraded force. One by one their leaders and members are being captured and have met justice. Soon, all of them will fall at the hands of the authorities."

"I would like to state for a fact that, as a result of the initial investigation of the SuperFerry 14 fire, the investigators have found no shrapnel, no twisted iron, no explosive residues or related items that will tend to lead that there were bombs or improvised explosive devices that could have started the fire aboard the ferry," he added.

Surigao del Sur Rep. Prospero Pichay Jr., who chairs the House committee on national defense, called on the government to neutralize the Abu Sayyaf, regardless of whether or not the bandits are responsible for the blast that set the ferry on fire.

Pichay issued this call as he urged the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to assist government in its campaign to crush the Abu Sayyaf to prove that the MILF has no ties with the bandits.

"It is time for the government to finish its war with the Abu Sayyaf, whose collapse has become imminent with the deaths and capture of its top leaders in recent months," Pichay said.

"The main goal of our government is to bring the Abu Sayyaf to its end. It should not sidetrack this goal by the Abu Sayyaf’s latest publicity stunt," he said.

Assisting in the final defeat of the Abu Sayyaf, Pichay said, will show the MILF’s sincerity in wanting to forge peace with the government. "A peace deal can only be possible if there is genuine sincerity on both sides," he said.

— Marichu Villanueva, Roel Pareño, Raffy Viray, Jose Rodel Clapano, Nestor Etolle, Jaime Laude, Nikko Dizon, Aurea Calica, AFP and AP