Paved with Good Intentions

U.S. Embassy officials in Manila led by Ambassador Kristie Anne Kenney may have committed a diplomatic breach of protocol when they gave away a $500,000 bounty the other week to two witnesses for providing information which led to the capture of suspected terrorist Hilario del Rosario Santos III, also known as Ahmed Islam Santos, alleged head of the Rajah Solaiman Movement (RSM) in Sto. Niño, Zamboanga City, last October 26, 2005.

Santos was allegedly behind botched plots to assassinate American nationals and bomb the US Embassy in Manila.

The RSM is a group of Christian converts to Islam that is reportedly associated with Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups abroad.

Santos is allegedly a founding member of the Rajah Solaiman Movement for Filipino converts to the Muslim faith (or Balik-Islams, as we call them locally). He allegedly set up a training camp in his family's property in Pangasinan, where an Al-Qaeda suicide cell supposedly trained before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Ambassador Kenney said at a press conference during the turnover, “Washington evaluated the information and the importance of information given out.” She lauded the “two very brave patriots for their actions and information," which led to the arrest of a "vicious terrorist.”

Fatima, Santos's wife, earlier petitioned the Makati Regional Trial Court to stop the US embassy from handing over the reward money and for embassy officials to stop calling her husband a “terrorist” since the case against him is still pending in court.

That, Mrs. Ambassador, is called presumption of innocence, and even the US Constitution guarantees that.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino "Nene" Q. Pimentel Jr. has also asked if the act of American diplomatic officials in handing reward money to tipsters of wanted criminal elements - in full view of the media - conformed with Philippine laws, international laws or diplomatic conventions of an embassy in foreign soil.

Pimentel hints there might be more to the simple act than simple propaganda. “Or is that a right accorded only to superpowers who might want to assert it as a prerogative?"

As Alice in Wonderland so aptly put it when she began to grow longer and longer, “Curiouser and curiouser!” (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).

Curiouser indeed for a foreign superpower to hand over reward money (in the US Embassy, of all places!) to Filipino nationals just like that. As Pimentel observed dryly, “That the Americans gave the reward money directly to the informants at the US Embassy speaks volumes about their lack of trust for the top echelon of the AFP”.

Pimentel was one of the fifteen members of the Phil Senate who voted to end the continued stay of US US bases in the Philippines in 1991.

The senator in Mindanao will ask Malacañang and the Department of Foreign Affairs to shed more light into the affair. But allow us to ask, even before he gets there: why do the rewarding in US soil (the US Embassy)? Was that to avoid the diplomatic fall-out which would inevitably result from distributing the moolah on Philippine soil?

500,000 (or PhP26.43 million, or PhP13.215 each at the exchange rate for that day of (one dollar equivalent to 52.860 pesos) is serious money, even in this cash strapped times. That’s like a double payout on the Super Lotto for the ordinary man in the street, as these two tipsters allegedly are.

Kenney said the reward came from the US State Department's Rewards for Justice program. According to a US embassy fact sheet, Rewards for Justice has paid out over US$62 million to people who helped put terrorists behind bars in the last seven years.

They deserve the reward...This is to encourage citizens to come forward with information that would lead to the arrest of a terrorist,” she added.

Ricardo Blancaflor, undersecretary of the National Security Council, said the reward was not sub judice, and did not mean it aimed to influence the outcome of the still unresolved court case against Santos.

Blancaflor said the government did not know if Santos had been replaced in the terrorist group.

Authorities are also linking Santos to the Superferry bombing in February 2004 and the simultaneous Valentine's Day bombings last year.

No presumption of innocence, no diplomatic protocol. All in the name of pogi points and helping a valuable ally keep her shaky seat in the palace. A Reward for Justice? And the trial hasn’t even started!

The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.

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