Abus had video camera — captive

A former hostage of the Abu Sayyaf claimed the bandits were amateur filmmakers who took video footage of various atrocities the terrorists committed against their victims.

Joel Guillo, who was abducted along with nurse Ediborah Yap and two other people from the Dr. Jose Torres Hospital in Lamitan, Basilan last June 2, said the Abu Sayyaf documented on video the torture, rape and beheading of their hostages.

Guillo was a guest yesterday in President Arroyo’s weekly radio/TV program.

Guillo said he came to know of the documentation done by the bandits when they showed footage of the burning of a school house in one town and the beheading of 10 civilians.

"They showed to us the camera (they used)," he said.

"In one encounter between the Abu Sayyaf and the military, the bandits captured one soldier who they later beheaded along with one civilian from Lantawan," Guillo recalled, although he failed to say if this was also documented on video.

An accountant, Guillo was taken hostage with Yap and nurses Reina Malonzo and Sheila Tabunyag during the Lamitan siege last year, as the military pursued the bandits who had just taken 20 captives from the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan.

Yap remains in Abu Sayyaf hands to this day, along with American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham.

The unsolicited testimony of Guillo came as the debate has yet to die down over the video footage released by the Armed Forces showing the beheading of captured soldiers supposedly by the Abu Sayyaf.

Opposition members in Congress questioned whether the military had misled the Estrada administration into presenting the video footage to Catholic bishops to justify the all-out war policy of the deposed president against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The grisly footage, released last week with Malacañang’s imprimatur, bolstered government’s suspicions that the Abu Sayyaf made the video to solicit support from international networks such as al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden.

Asked if he favored the public airing of the video, Guillo replied: "It must be shown to the people in Luzon and Visayas who are opposed to Balikatan so that they will know that Balikatan will be a big help to the Philippine government (to crush the Abu Sayyaf)."

President Arroyo, who said the video depicts the truth, said the bandits also used footage showing their victims pleading that ransom be paid for their freedom. She cited the case of the Burnhams, in captivity for nine months.

"A grim reality of their (Abu Sayyaf) ruthlessness but most of all, we have already known but have never actually seen before," she pointed out.

Guillo recounted to her how the bandits maltreated the hostages, and treated Martin Burnham like a dog.

"He is chained and leashed while we walk and he is being tied to a tree at nighttime," Guillo said.

"Mrs. Burnham cries and cries a lot because she wants to see her family again and every time there is an encounter because we do not know what to do. We just run for our lives," he recalled.

Guillo was rescued after four months and 12 days by troopers under the command of then Col. Hermogenes Esperon, now commander of the Presidential Security Group.

Meanwhile, the Basilan Prosecutor’s Office is reportedly not keen on pursuing murder charges against Abu Sayyaf bandits responsible for the beheading of a barangay captain and his son in a remote village in Maluso town in 1994.

Prosecutors in the capital of Isabela City reportedly begged off from directly handling the case out of fear for their lives.

Police probers investigating the gory incident have also uncovered that the supposed designated executioner, private land surveyor Alfredo Peñaflor alias "Jun," was not the only one who beheaded Solomon Mayang and his son Jonathan.

"Jun" had an accomplice identified as Junie Abines, they said.

The two were among the five surveyors abducted by the Abu Sayyaf on Nov. 19 in Sitio Tablon, Sumisip. The others were identified as Jesus Bonifacio, Nelson Avellano and Danny Dabad.

Interviewed by agents of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Isabela City the other day, Jun claimed that after several days of evading government troops, they arrived blindfolded with the bandits at noon of Dec. 24, 1994 in Upper Mayahay, Maluso.

He said another faction was already waiting for them.

Jun told probers that after their blindfolds were removed, they saw two undressed men kneeling on the ground and being restrained by the extremists.

He added that the leader of the bandits then ordered him and Abines at gunpoint to execute the Mayangs by beheading.

Claiming he feared for his life, Jun said he proceeded to kill the elder Mayang while Abines did the same to the son with machetes provided by the bandits.

The execution was witnessed by a local commercial cameraman whom Jun identified as Juvenal Bruno. It was Bruno’s video tape that was recovered by the military in an encounter with the Abu Sayyaf.

Police are now trying to locate Bruno to bolster the double murder case which the CIDG intends to file in Zamboanga City.

Superintendent Marvin Bola-Bola, CIDG director for Western Mindanao, also said yesterday that Mona Mayang, wife and mother of the victims, expressed her intention to pursue the case.

Among the respondents are the slain Abu Sayyaf chieftain Abdurajak Janjalani and the bandits under his command. — With Jaime Laude