ZAMBOANGA CITY - A government prosecutor in Zamboanga City has expressed his apprehensions to the amnesty for the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) which is proposed by Sen. Richard Gordon.

City Prosecutor Ricardo Cabaron said, "it is difficult to weigh the proposal in the light of so many atrocities committed by the bandit group, the impact these activities had to the community, the humiliation their acts caused the country in the eyes of the international community."

Cabaron, who has been prosecuting cases filed against Abu Sayyaf members in the South, said that the proposal has to be studied "very seriously."

"This problem has been here for so many years," Cabaron said, and "right now I can't see any solution to it. I can't even outrightly say if we are winning or just a stalemate."

Cabaron cited the need for consultation and thorough study before "jumping into some kind of a monumental solution."

Amnesty, he said, could only be given to a group that is fighting for a political cause or to a group that claims to campaigning for the greater interest of the community. Cabaron further

Explained that rebellion, insurrection and secession are crimes that when successful, become obliterated. "But not kidnapping," Cabaron said.

The Abu Sayyaf Group first gained notoriety after they seized and razed to the ground Ipil town in Zamboanga Sibugay in 1994. They later on hogged international headlines when they kidnapped dozens of foreigners from a tourist resort in Sipadan, Malaysia and Dos Palmas Resort in Palawan. The bandit group has also become known for beheading their captives if their ransom demand was not met and has been blamed for several bombing incidents across the country.

"Would these be considered as a political matter?" Cabaron asked.

The prosecutor said, if this proposal is made "simply because the government failed in tracking them down, I think it is a weak point of argument,"  By Queenie Casimiro, ABS-CBN News Zamboanga