EDITORIAL – Vulnerable

Soldiers and police lost their lives in armed encounters before scores of bandits were apprehended and detained at the provincial jail in Kidapawan, North Cotabato. Early yesterday, the efforts and sacrifices of the slain forces and their colleagues were wasted after the bandits were freed from detention in a raid on the jail by some 100 armed men believed to be the inmates’ cohorts.

Authorities counted 158 inmates who bolted the provincial jail, which is a rundown facility housed in a former school compound in a forested area. It was unclear how many of the escapees belonged to the group suspected to have staged the raid, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.

The BIFF is supposed to be a breakaway faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, although the two joined forces in the slaughter of 44 police Special Action Force commandos in Mamasapano, Maguindanao in 2015. Yesterday the MILF denied knowing the raiders.

Jail guards put up a spirited fight for two hours, but the 20 guards were overwhelmed by the firepower and sheer number of the raiders. A jail guard was killed in the firefight.

Last year, three inmates on trial for drugs and illegal possession of explosives also bolted the facility in North Cotabato’s capital city. The jail, like other detention facilities nationwide, suffers from a chronic lack of funds and personnel. The result has been congestion and sub-human conditions in certain jails as well as vulnerability to raids by armed groups out to spring their detained members or seize guns.

And the armed groups have taken advantage of the vulnerability. In August last year about 50 Maute gunmen raided the Lanao del Sur provincial jail in Marawi City and freed 23 inmates, eight of them members of the group that has pledged allegiance to the jihadist Islamic State. It took the raiders only 10 minutes to enter the compound and seize the M16 rifles of the 12 guards on duty. The eight Mautes had been arrested only a week earlier in a Lanao del Sur town for possession of guns and materials for bomb making.

There lies the other major consequence of a jailbreak: it allows such suspects to pursue their illegal activities and, in the case of the Mautes, to continue launching violent attacks. The latest jailbreak should prompt the government to improve detention facilities all over the country, especially in Mindanao where armed threat groups have become experts in keeping their members out of jail.