Sighting Sabaya, seeing ghosts

Senators must be squirming in their seats. The priest whose hearsay tale had them rashly prescribing court martial of a general is now seeing ghosts and wants the country to believe him. Fr. Cirilo Nacorda of Lamitan parish in Basilan insists that Abu Sayyaf leader Abu Sabaya is still alive. His proof: Sabaya was at a duwaa (party) in nearby Tuburan town on June 22, the day after the AFP reported that he was killed in a sea clash. Friends, whom he wouldn’t name or present, allegedly saw Sabaya wining and dining. Or, is it friends of friends?

Nacorda quotes other unidentified sources as having spotted Sabaya in recent days in other towns, including Lamitan. Thus, he concludes, the AFP definitely was bribed to let Sabaya elude a dragnet in Zamboanga del Norte in which Navy and Marine officers contrivedly machine-gunned him to the bottom of the Sulu Sea.

What will he think of next - that proof that Sabaya is alive is last week’s kidnapping of six Avon salespersons in Patikul, Sulu? After all, the province also hosts Abu Sayyaf extremists. And Sabaya was known to have whitened his skin with Eskinol. Maybe he needs Avon facial cream to scrub powder burns this time.

The malady lies partly in the military’s standard secretiveness, and in media skepticism. The brass tersely announced last June that a US spy plane had monitored Sabaya’s killing in a sea encounter at dawn with a Navy patrol. Unfortunately, the body fell off the boat and sank. Frogmen, and fishermen enticed by a P50,000-reward, scoured the waters and coasts for days, but couldn’t find it. The media hooted that Sabaya’s killing was a fish tale.

President Gloria Arroyo came to the AFP’s rescue. She told a small group of journalists over dinner that the hunt for Sabaya was an elaborate plan under the joint RP-US military exercise Balikatan 02-1. Spies and sophisticated equipment were used. An Abu Sayyaf guide was lured to gift Sabaya with a knapsack embedded with an electronic tracker. The guide himself had a similar bag. US spy planes traced them fleeing by boat from Basilan to Zamboanga peninsula. Days later the gadgets led infantry patrols to a clearing where Sabaya and his kidnapping band were resting with their hostages, Martin and Gracia Burnham, and Ediborah Yap. Sabaya survived the attack with only three men. He tried to sail back to Basilan on June 21 on a rented boat. "Oops," the President suddenly caught herself, "I might be revealing too much top secrets." She explained that operations were still going on, referring to the continuing US search for Osama bin Laden, probably using the same trackers.

When she left it at that, other officials pitched in pieces of the puzzle. National Security Adviser Roilo Golez said Mrs. Arroyo has seen a CIA videotape of sea clash. President George W. Bush had watched the action live in the Oval Office. Like in the movies, only heat-generated silhouettes could be gleaned. But Navy and Marine gunners in night-vision goggles were sure of their targets because of red-blinking trackers beamed to a spy satellite. The US spy plane radioed to them exactly where Sabaya was seated on the boat.

The official accounts were not enough. Filipinos are wont to believe reel, not real, life. Newsclips of Nacorda’s claiming sightings seemed more credible. So Malacañang is contemplating on borrowing the CIA videotape for public showing, if only to put the matter to rest. It’s unlikely the White House would approve, though. It wouldn’t want bin Laden and pals to study what it’s using to track them down.

Meanwhile, Nacorda is on a roll. With full media coverage, he pooh-poohed last week a 2001 report of then-Army Inspector General Reynaldo Rivera on the "Lamitan incident" before the Senate opened its own inquiry. While three hostages were able to escape, Rivera wrote, operational lapses allowed their Abu Sayyaf captors to slip through a ring of troops around the town hospital. Nacorda said Rivera’s successor, Gen. Froilan Maglaya, later made a more thorough investigation to implicate Maj. Gen. Romeo Dominguez, then-head of the Army First Division, in alleged bribery and collusion to let the kidnappers flee. "Maglaya discovered many things by talking directly with Lamiteños," Nacorda proclaimed. "I believe he was convinced with our allegation. Most of his findings are incriminating."

The next day, only one newspaper ran Maglaya’s clarification that he never completed his investigation. He had to suspend it, he explained, because the Balikatan came into full swing in February to July. He will resume it when the Senate-prescribed court martial opens.

The court martial itself can spark more skepticism. Although its report is merely recommendatory, the Senate expects a full trial to begin at once. But there’s a procedure for such actions. The Army would first have to conduct formal investigations on the specific charge, whether collusion or snafus. Unlike in the Senate inquiry, lawyers in the Army proceedings can examine witnesses. Dominguez will finally get a chance to point out what he’s been raring to for months - that affidavits of Narcoda’s bribery witnesses are in English when all they speak is the local tongue.

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What’s a First Gentleman to do? When airport concessionaires denounced the onerous Piatco contract to erect a third Manila international terminal, they alleged that Atty. Mike Arroyo is its patron. They wouldn’t believe he had nothing to do with the deal inked during the Ramos tenure and revised under Estrada. They claimed that his pals from the Carpio Villaraza Cruz law firm had lawyered for Piatco.

The firm’s Cruz, Avelino, is now Chief Presidential Legal Counsel. And he’s recommending, as the concessionaires wish, that the contract be reviewed with the aim of undoing the odious amendments inserted during the Estrada tenure. This time around it’s Piatco that’s accusing Arroyo and the law firm of conspiring to grab ownership.

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