Four young officers accused of leading hundreds of troops in a failed 2003 mutiny have escaped from "an army prison, setting off a high-profile manhunt and security alert, the military said yesterday.
The army said it discovered the jailbreak, the second after a similar escape by another officer more than a month ago, at a prison in a Manila army camp late on Tuesday while inmates were being counted.
Army spokesman Major Bartolome Bacarro identified the fugitives as lieutenants Lawrence San Juan, Sonny Sarmiento, Patricio Bumindang and Captain Nathaniel Rabonza. All have excellent combat experience and at least one officer once belonged to an elite anti-terrorist unit trained and armed by the US military.
"We would like to appeal to the public to assist us in locating these fugitives," Bacarro said, warning that they are facing charges of rebellion and "could be dangerous."
Army chief Lieutenant-General Hermogenes Esperon relayed the news to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who ordered the recapture of the officers and an investigation to punish any erring prison officials, Bacarro said.
"I'm embarrassed by the situation. I'm taking full responsibility," Esperon told a nationally televised news conference, but said he would not resign.
The officers were among the core leaders of about 300 troops who in July 2003 occupied the ritzy Oakwood Hotel and a nearby shopping mall in the capital's financial district. They rigged the area with bombs, but surrendered peacefully after about 20 hours.
The government said that action was part of a larger coup conspiracy, but the officers said they were only demanding the resignation of Arroyo and other officials over alleged corruption.
Arroyo has been haunted in recent months by calls to step down over vote-rigging and corruption allegations. She escaped an impeachment bid last September but opposition lawmakers vowed to pursue efforts to remove her this year and coup rumors have continued to swirl.
Shortly after the escape, the military set up checkpoints around the army camp and intensified patrols. The 115,000-strong police force went on nationwide alert and pictures of the four officers were posted in several camps.
Arroyo canceled a number of provincial trips later in the week, but aides said it was unrelated to the jailbreak. In one province she was to visit, where communist guerrillas are active, security officials said they found land mines and homemade bombs, but didn't elaborate.
Esperon said the four officers apparently jumped over a wall using chairs then dashed toward a nearby cemetery. A lawyer for some of the officers, Ruel Pulido, said three of them had protested a plan by the army to transfer them to a military intelligence detention center late on Tuesday.
Esperon said he ordered the transfer because of an intelligence report that some of the officers were planning to escape. He blamed the jailbreak on a "lapse" and said an investigation was under way.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS