MILF COMMANDERS FACE MURDER RAPS; P5-M REWARD UP
BALER, AURORA, AUGUST 20, 2008 (STAR) By Manny Galvez - The government filed yesterday more than a hundred criminal cases against the Muslim separatist rebels responsible for last Monday’s carnage in Mindanao and offered P5 million each to anyone who can give information that will lead to the arrest of two rebel leaders.Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said authorities will also make sure that warrants of arrest for multiple murder, arson, and robbery are served to the rebel leaders, either through the Joint Ceasefire Committee or the central committee of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) whose men pillaged five towns in Lanao del Norte and Sarangani provinces, leaving dozens dead and wounded.
Teodoro told a press conference here that 115 counts of arson, multiple robbery and multiple murder are being readied against MILF commander Ameril Umbra Kato and 41 counts of multiple murder against Abdurahman Macapaar alias Commander Bravo in connection with the deadly attacks.
“We will file the cases as soon as the evidence is gathered. Aabutin ng libo ang kaso (The cases will reach the thousands),” he told reporters on the sidelines of the celebration of 399th anniversary of this town and the 130th birthday of the late Commonwealth President Manuel Quezon.
The P5 million reward for the capture of Kato and Bravo was announced at a press briefing in Malacañang last night by Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno.
Teodoro said it is up to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the affected areas to determine the cases to be filed against the other MILF rebels.
The DOJ is assembling a team of prosecutors to handle the preliminary investigation and the filing of the charges.
“This is the advice of the Security Council. The President has also advised me to handle this and file the cases,” Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said. He said he has instructed Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño to form the panel.
Teodoro said the DILG is expected to deliver the warrants to the MILF central committee.
“If still they could not surrender them (MILF leaders), then we will be the one to enforce it,” he said.
Teodoro said the MILF guerrillas will also be made to answer for recruiting minors and for installing improvised explosive devices in some houses before fleeing. “The reason why the villagers could not immediately return to their homes was because the MILF left booby traps so anong klaseng tao ’yan (what kind of people are they),” he said.
He said that of the 6,000 families who have gone back to their homes, half are Muslims, indicating that Kato did not spare anyone.
Teodoro said the attacks, described as “sneaky and treacherous” by President Arroyo, showed a disorganized rebel group that had no control over its field commanders.
He said even MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu claimed he was surprised by the attacks.
“We will immediately take action and prevent such type of action from re-occurring,” he said.
But Teodoro declined to join the chorus of officials accusing the MILF of insincerity.
“We can’t say they are not sincere,” he said, adding government is not closing the door on dialogues with the MILF.
“If we remove dialogue, you are forcing the MILF to fight,” he added.
More charges
In Cotabato City, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group or CIDG filed 60 criminal charges against Kato.
Superintendent Marcelo Pintac said that of the charges, 22 were for arson, three for the execution-style murders of Visayan villagers in Pikit, North Cotabato last week, and the rest for robbery in band.
Kato is also suspected to have links with the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda global terror network of Osama bin Laden.
Pintac said dozens of evacuees, including Muslim farmers, helped the CIDG build an airtight case against Umbra, who is notorious for enforcing a Taliban-style justice in isolated barangays in the province.
Pintac said Kato’s victims include 71-year-old Lucio Pano, his wife Isidra, 60 and their son Dulcesimo, 39, who were first tortured before being killed one after another in Barangay Takepan, Pikit more than a week ago.
Pintac said the complaints were filed with the office of prosecutor Al Calica who is also chief of Central Mindanao Anti-Terrorism Task Force.
Poor ceasefire monitoring
More than a decade after the signing of a ceasefire deal between the government and the MILF, none has ever been made to account for the numerous instances of truce violation.
Observers blame the lack of organizational coordination between the MILF’s central committee and its field commanders as one of the constraints in enforcing the 1997 General Agreement on Cessation of Hostilities.
Enforcing the agreement are GRP-MILF Coordinating Committees on the Cessation of Hostilities and the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team (IMT).
“We’re not saying that all policemen and soldiers in the field are perfect, but one thing is sure. Those who misbehaved were punished, demoted and some were even discharged from the service,” a senior police officer, who was involved in the monitoring of the ceasefire in the late 1990s, said.
The disciplinary actions on policemen and soldiers were administrative in nature and not made on the basis of tripartite recommendation from the joint ceasefire committee and the IMT.
The government was said to have submitted some five years ago to the MILF a list of terrorists and notorious criminals to test supposedly the effectiveness of the security cooperation.
Such arrangement, however, has not resulted in the capture or prosecution of criminals or terrorists.
MNLF’s Ghadzali Jaafar, in an interview with Catholic station dxMS in Cotabato City, admitted MILF rebels were responsible for Monday’s attacks and that the rebel group is set to investigate the matter in accordance to protocols and procedures agreed between the GRP and MILF panels.
“Everything has to be investigated properly,” Jaafar said. “Many of our people have become emotional as a consequence of recent developments in the peace negotiations.”
He was apparently referring to the botched signing in Malaysia of the Memorandum of Agreement on ancestral domain because of a Supreme Court temporary restraining order.
But Jaafar said burning of houses, killing of innocent civilians and looting are against the MILF’s code of conduct. He also stressed that the MILF is still committed to peace.
The IMT, composed of military and police officers from Malaysia, Brunei and Libya, and a rehabilitation specialist from Japan, has been subject of bitter criticisms lately for its “poor performance” in overseeing the GRP-MILF ceasefire.
The provincial board of North Cotabato also authored a strongly-worded resolution urging Malacañang to replace Brig. Gen. Reynaldo Sealana, chairman of the government’s ceasefire committee, for his failure to stop the spate of harassment of farming communities in the towns of Midsayap, Aleosan and Pikit. The tenure of the IMT is until Aug. 31.
Peace advocates are worried the GRP and MILF panels, as a consequence of the recent incidents in Mindanao and the controversies shrouding the MOA-AD, may not be able to meet soon to discuss a possible extension of the tenure of IMT for one more year.
Some Malaysian members of IMT returned to their country last May reportedly out of frustration at the snail’s pace progress of the peace talks.
But a Malaysian source said it’s actually the spiraling cost of maintaining a contingent in the IMT that explained their departure. - With John Unson, Cecille Suerte Felipe, Mike Frialde, Paolo Romero
MILF HAS NO CONTROL OVER THEIR COMMANDERS -- YANO
By James Mananghaya - Armed Forces chief Gen. Alexander Yano said the deadly attacks on several towns in Mindanao by Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels showed the secessionist group’s lack of control over its field commanders.“It appears that several MILF sub-commanders are not controlled by the MILF leadership and are just using the peace process as a blanket to launch violent attacks against the people of Mindanao,” Yano said at a press briefing at Camp Aguinaldo yesterday.
“These developments are clear manifestations of the insincerity to the peace process of a significant portion of the MILF,” he added.
He said the separatist rebels’ rampage, starting with the ambush of government troops in Lanao del Sur, is a “virtual declaration of war against the duly constituted authority, which was confirmed by Commander Bravo’s declaration of jihad or Holy War.”
“The AFP shall not allow this to go on, we cannot allow ambuscades, arson, kidnapping, hostage taking, blocking of main highways and other atrocities to be perpetrated by the MILF against the Filipino people,” he said.
Yano said there are enough troops in Mindanao to deal with the MILF and that more soldiers are prepared for deployment to affected areas if the need arises.
“In fact, our troops are already on the ground as early as dawn yesterday morning. They are heavily engaged in these areas and we are confident that we can restore normalcy and we can take drastic action against these groups,” he said.
The AFP chief also said that units in other areas have been ordered to take an “active defense stance” to prevent the fighting from spilling over to other nearby towns and provinces.
Brig. Gen. Hilario Atendido, chief of the anti-terrorist Task Force Tabak, said in a phone interview that the MILF rebels left the occupied towns at around noon yesterday but took with them male civilians as human shields.
The MILF leadership, said spokesman Eid Kabalu, did not sanction the attacks and the commanders involved vented their frustration over the botched signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on ancestral domain in Malaysia last Aug. 5.
House Speaker Jose Nograles said the violence in Lanao del Norte showed the MILF leadership has lost its control over field commanders.
“Is the leadership of the MILF really in control over their field commanders?” he asked, pointing out that the MILF hierarchy needs to “clarify if their field commanders still obey their chain of command.”
“How can we proceed with the peace talks if the top officials of the MILF cannot control their field commanders (who) are apparently acting on their own?”
In a statement, Nograles said the “incursions” by the separatist rebels insurgents are a “very bad sign that the MILF chain-of-command is breaking apart.”
He noted that even Kabalu was surprised by the recent attacks.
“We really have to know first from the MILF leaders if they are still in control. Those who are out of line should be relieved from their posts and should be punished by the MILF leadership for breaking the chain-of-command,” Nograles suggested.
Reports said a certain Commander Bravo, head of the 102 MILF Base Command, led the attacks.
“These attacks should be condemned by everyone, including the leaders of the MILF. These acts of criminality and terrorism by rebel Muslim groups should be dealt with quickly and met frontally with the full force of the law,” he said.
“The government and our armed forces cannot afford now to deal with this kind of situation with kid gloves. We want peace, but when terrorism is the result of peace negotiations, the terrorists must be stopped and subdued at all cost,” Nograles added.
To show good faith, Nograles urged the MILF leadership to help the government neutralize the group of Bravo.
“Even the top leaders of the MILF should not let this incident pass. This is an insult to their leadership. Clearly, Commander Bravo is not inclined to respect the MILF chain-of-command and this is a very serious offense in any military organization,” Nograles said.
Tighter security for Davao
In Davao City, Southern Mindanao regional police director Andres Caro II said tighter security and monitoring of areas around three MILF camps in the province have been put in place.
“We have put our men on high alert and we have been constantly assessing and checking every detail of the security measures that we have so far implemented,” Caro said.
“We have been closely watching the developments in other areas in Mindanao as well as whatever movements there would be in these known MILF camps here. And we make sure that there would not be any spillover of these clashes in our region,” he said.
Caro said there are three MILF camps in the region – two in Davao Oriental and one in Davao del Sur.
Caro said the tighter security was also in preparation for the week-long Kadayawan harvest festival featuring various Lumad tribes.
Army Maj. Gen. Leo Jogy Fojas said the region was generally peaceful until last weekend when rebels attacked Maasim.
“Here in the region, it is relatively peaceful. The only problem I had was the one in Maasim,” Fojas said.
MILF-NPA tie-up?
The Communist New People’s Army in Davao and Bukidnon is reportedly linking up with the MILF for a possible joint operation against government troops, a military official said.
The official, who declined to be named, also said the MILF attacks in Lanao and Sarangani provinces were meant to force the military to divert troops from North Cotabato, which was reportedly the real target of the secessionist group.
“We know that these attacks in Lanao and Sarangani were just diversionary for them (MILF) to be able to launch a major offensive in North Cotabato,” he said.
He said it was the reason why the AFP and the PNP drew reinforcements from Western Visayas and Luzon. - With Delon Porcalla, Jaime Laude, and Edith Regalado
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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