Cops arrest mayor over slay of town councilor in Maguindanao Sur

Solaiman Sandigan —SOLAIMAN SANDIGAN FACEBOOK

COTABATO CITY—Police arrested on Wednesday night a mayor in Maguindanao del Sur for his alleged involvement in the murder of a municipal councilor in April this year.

Agents of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) arrested Datu Salibo Mayor Solaiman Sandigan in his house in nearby Datu Piang town at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.

Sandigan did not resist arrest when law enforcers, backed by soldiers from the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade, presented him with the arrest warrant issued by the Regional Trial Court Branch 15 in Cotabato City. No bail was recommended for the mayor’s temporary liberty.

READ: Maguindanao del Sur town councilor slain in daylight gun attack

Sandigan, 64, was linked to the murder of Datu Salibo Municipal Councilor Demsom Silongan on April 17. Silongan was alighting from his pickup truck in front of the town’s Sangguniang Bayan session hall when he was attacked by armed men.

Denial

The mayor denied the charges, insisting that he was innocent.

Four other persons listed in the warrant of arrest with Sandigan have surrendered, according to the CIDG.

Police Lt. Col. Ariel Huesca, CIDG regional chief in BARMM, said 15 other suspects named in the arrest warrant were still at large.

Barely four months after the councilor’s death, on Aug. 16, the councilor’s brother, Datu Jun Manot Silongan, chair of Barangay Penditen, Datu Salibo, was killed in a roadside bombing in nearby Barangay Ganta, Shariff Saydona Mustapha town, also in Maguindanao del Sur.

He was walking home from a visit to a relative in Barangay Ganta when the bomb was set off, killing him instantly. His two companions were wounded.

Police, however, have not established any link between the two attacks.

—EDWIN O. FERNANDEZ