Kato delays arrest by staying in MILF communities — military

Ameril Umbra Kato, seated, the commander of Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), the breakaway faction of the largest Filipino Muslim rebel group, is interviewed by the media inside his rebel stronghold in Maguindanao province in southern Philippines. AP FILE PHOTO

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Ameril Umra Kato, a Moro rebel leader who has broken away from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and has been leading his men in battles against government troops in protest of the peace pact between the MILF and the Philippine government, has been staying in MILF communities that the military could not just enter, authorities said.

The government’s clearing operation in Maguindanao is continuing against combatants of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), the military wing of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (BIFM), except for its ailing founding head, Kato, who has appeared to some to be untouchable.

The issue on Kato and his men being tracked down to face a court order for their arrest on several criminal cases they have been charged with, surfaced anew Saturday during the visit here of Interior and Local Government Secretary Manuel Roxas and Secretary Teresita Deles of the Office of the Presidential Assistant on the Peace Process, who led in the formal opening of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) office.

Prior to the calling-off of the joint military-police law enforcement operation, Maj. Gen. Romeo Gapuz, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, told reporters that “Kato is not the subject of our surgical operation.”

Gapuz told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the founding chair of the BIFM-BIFF, a breakaway group from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, was monitored to have been staying in MILF communities, and therefore, the AFP and PNP lawmen would have to secure the clearance of the government-MILF ceasefire mechanism groups.

At the BTC office inaugural rite, MILF chief peace negotiator Mohagher Iqbal said Kato, the former MILF 105th Base commander, has refused to surrender despite non-hostile efforts to have him yield.

Roxas said the government has been “following protocol” under the ceasefire agreement between the Philippine government and the MILF so as not to jeopardize the main objective of attaining genuine and lasting peace in Mindanao.

Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, who was tagged by the MILF in 2013 as a BIFF supporter, along with Muslimin Sema, chair of the Moro National Liberation Front Council of 15, believed he and Sema have been vindicated with the failure so far of the military to arrest Kato because he has been staying in MILF communities.  Mangudadatu and Sema have both denied supporting the BIFF to undermine the peace talks.

Deles emphasized that while the Philippine government has been observing the ceasefire protocol with the MILF, “there is no ceasefire with the BIFF.” She said that clearing and law enforcement operations against armed rebel fugitives, and efforts to relocate and return evacuees to their places of origin have been going on and would continue, subject to the protocols of the peace process with the MILF.

“Our laws will continue to be enforced,” Deles pointed out.

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