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Southeast Asia
Why Was Robot Killed? — It was the CIA
2005-03-16
I sure as hell hope it was the CIA ...
Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Joel Virador yesterday raised questions about the killing of Abu Sayyaf leader Ghalib Andang, alias Commander Robot, who was among the hostage takers at the MMRC. Virador said he learned from Andang, when he celebrated Eid'l Fitr with Moro detainees last year, about the alleged involvement of civilian and military officials in collusion with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in numerous terrorist activities in Mindanao. He said Andang had told him the kidnapping of Jeffrey Schilling was actually staged and that the American was actually a CIA agent providing training to the Abu Sayyaf. Virador said many of the Moro detainees, who were mostly Tausug, also told him they were tortured by the military into confessing to the crimes with which they were charged. "The rash and inordinate use of force by the police and military to resolve the hostage crisis has effectively quashed any prospect of determining the real reasons behind the incident," he said. "It has also imperiled the resolution of numerous pending cases lodged against the detainees, especially considering that most of them could have been falsely accused and used as unwilling scapegoats."
"Pure as the driven snow, they wuz...and now they're dead at the hands of an inhuman killing machine!"
The detainees also decried that they had languished in jail for more than four years because of continued inaction by the Department of Justice, he added.
Languishing away, no gun sex for months at a time. Leading lonely, empty lives, in which a beleagured Robot was forced to call his friends on the outside and instruct them to have eight safehouses ready for himself and the lads...
Posted by:seafarious

#12  Looks like lead poisoning got to him.
Posted by: Glereger Flineck2275   2005-03-16 4:49:14 PM  

#11  You can kiss my shiny metal ass!!
Posted by: Bender   2005-03-16 1:24:01 PM  

#10  
THE ROBOT IS DEAD?
Posted by: BigEd   2005-03-16 11:13:59 AM  

#9  From the opposite perspective Wretchard quotes Max Soliven:

When the gunsmoke – and tear gas – cleared, the most notorious kidnappers-killers-and-bombers were dead: the bully Alhamzer Manatad Limbong, alias Bro. "Kosovo" who had been identified by Gracia Burnham as one of their cruel kidnappers, suspected of masterminding the SuperFerry 14 bombing which killed 110 helpless passengers, and triggered off the motorbike "bomb" in Magutay, Zamboanga City, which killed US M/Sgt. Mark Jackson, and seriously wounded US Capt. Mike Hummel in October 2002; Ghalib Andang, alias Commander "Robot" who had led the gang which kidnapped foreign tourists and Filipinos from the Malaysian tourist isle of Sipadan, and raped women hostages repeatedly, humiliating the Estrada government for months and collecting millions of dollars in ransom; and Nadzmi Sabdullah, alias Commander "Global", the noisy spokesman of the Sipadan kidnap caper. Also slain was ASG detainee Hasbi Dais alias Lando, who had conducted the Monday "negotiations" and rejected all the government’s calls for the group’s peaceful surrender.

Sounds like there were not enough Fat Ladies Singing on yesterday's announcement
Posted by: 3dc   2005-03-16 9:58:50 AM  

#8  Wretchard quotes the Left Wing Philippine Inquirer spinning the raid this way:


Their (the Abu Sayyaf ) deaths also mean that they have escaped trial and, more importantly, put any information that they possessed irretrievably beyond the government's reach. ... And the shrugging continued when other things were pointed out, such as the dangers posed by having firearm-bearing guards in close proximity to the Abu Sayyaf prisoners. ... Human rights activists, for one, have been battling for years against overcrowding in our jails, which puts underage offenders in close proximity to hardened criminals, and which makes it even more difficult to properly isolate dangerous inmates such as captured members of the Abu Sayyaf. ... The fact is that the Abu Sayyaf won yet another round against the government. Its captured members died with guns blazing, drawing the world's attention to their cause and their refusal to let their detention circumscribe their actions.
Posted by: 3dc   2005-03-16 9:54:43 AM  

#7  Read today's belmont club on this topic.

All of which you would have guessed from reading bits and pieces of the Belmont Club but Greg Sheridan puts it together in a respectable and scholarly way. Philippines prisons are places where inmates devote nearly limitless ingenuity to devising mind-boggling schemes. It's a place where inmates implant plastic pellets in their Johnsons using razor blades, merthiolate and ignorance; it's a place where inmates have passed messages to each other using cockroaches tethered to thread; it's a place where people play a game of 'attract the fly' by betting on which coin a fly will choose to light upon in the toilets. It's a place where your life depends on your shiv and the guys you've chosen as your friends. Poetry has been written and forgotten within its walls. It is a place of closely held ritual, where by tradition all prisoners beat their cups against the bars when a man is led to the electric chair. It is as alien to the Philippine ruling elite as the surface of Mars.

I can imagine the Abu Sayyaf assaulting the police raiders in the teargas clouds, running with that peculiar comedic gait characteristic of people sprinting in flip-flops, lighting up the mattresses with a spluttering match possessed with the indomitable spirit of Bahala Na (I don't give a damn) and the cops shooting them down in the same part. One day, after the action has died down in the Middle East, popular culture may turn its attention to the Second Front against terror in Southeast Asia. Instead of the desert the images will be of small boats flitting among islets under a whitening moon and of strange chases in stinking cities between grotesques that would do justice to the Army of Darkness. Kipling would have been the writer of choice to capture the atmosphere, only he is seventy years dead.
Posted by: 3dc   2005-03-16 9:50:04 AM  

#6  You'd think he'd have had a few fembots waiting for him...

Ghalib? Ghalib Andang, what have you been up to?
Posted by: Stella #72   2005-03-16 9:07:37 AM  

#5  ZF-
Don't laugh, some of them are still telling their constituents that us leaving Clark and Subic Bay is just a bluff...

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2005-03-16 7:22:02 AM  

#4  It sure would be nice to have a CIA that concentrates on whacking guys like Mr. Roboto. Paging Porter Goss . . .
Posted by: Mike   2005-03-16 6:57:30 AM  

#3  Between conjuring up fantasies about Uncle Sam's doings and stealing government money, Filipino politicians are clearly earning their keep.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2005-03-16 2:46:52 AM  

#2  Yes disasemble.
Posted by: Johny Five   2005-03-16 2:23:12 AM  

#1  ...You'd think he'd have had a few fembots waiting for him...

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2005-03-16 12:07:09 AM  

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