MANILA, Philippines — Investigators are also looking at clan feud or “rido” as among the possible motives behind the killing of a Maguindanao town mayor in front of a hotel in Manila earlier this week.
“Politics, rido (clan feud), and involvement in illegal drugs,” Capt. Henry Navarro, chief of the Manila Police District (MPD) homicide section, told INQUIRER.net in a text message on Thursday, enumerating the angles the police are looking at to solve the Feb. 10 murder of Mayor Abdul Wahab Sabal of Sultan Sumagka town (formerly known as Talitay).
READ: Drugs, politics eyed behind murder of Maguindanao town mayor
A special investigation task group was formed to conduct an “all-out, in-depth investigation” on the crime, according to Navarro. The task force is composed of the MPD Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit, homicide investigation section, Malate Police Station, Crime Laboratory Office, and the Legal Service.
Navarro said investigators are also confirming with the Sultan Sumagka Municipal Police Station why Sabal was accompanied by a police officer when he was gunned down.
READ: Maguindanao town mayor shot dead in Manila
He said they have yet to confirm if the police officer was indeed Sabal’s security escort.
Sabal is among the 46 alleged “narco-politicians” or politicians said to be involved in the drug trade, whose names were made public by President Rodrigo Duterte last March 2019.
All government officials in that list were stripped of police escorts as ordered by the Department of the Local and Interior Government.
Philippine National Police (PNP) spokesperson Brig. Gen. Bernard Banac said this policy remains enforced.
DILG Undersecretary and spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said they will also have this checked.
“If he is in the narco list, his deputation was revoked by Napolcom (National Police Commission). Therefore he has no authority over his local police and per pronouncement of SILG (Secretary of the Local and Interior Government), police security cannot be provided him by the local municipal police station,” he said in a text message.