MILF rebels release Marawi police chief after raid to free jailed comrades

ILIGAN CITY, Lanao del Norte – Moro guerrillas freed the Marawi City police chief whom they had seized hours earlier during a raid Friday on the city’s police headquarters to free jailed comrades, police and Moro Islamic Liberation Front authorities said.

Von Al Haq, spokesperson of the MILF, said Superintendent Christopher Panapan was handed over by the group of an MILF commander whom he did not identify to members of the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team near Marawi City.

Al Haq said Panapan was unharmed.

The joint ceasefire committees of the government and the MILF, the provincial government, the IMT, and the Army’s 103rd Infantry Brigade were instrumental in facilitating the safe release of Panapan, he said.

Al Haq said negotiators, including Said Sheik, the former ceasefire chief of the MILF, talked with Panapan’s captors and secured his release from an undisclosed location.

“On the lighter side, this incident is proof that all ceasefire mechanisms are operating and [we]are united” in peaceful endeavors, he said.

Followers of the unidentified MILF commander stormed the Marawi City police office around 12:10 a.m. Friday, disarmed policemen on duty, shot and killed one person there, and then freed two of their detained comrades before fleeing with the city’s police chief in tow.

Colonel Glen Macasero, commander of the Army’s 103rd Infantry Brigade based in Marawi City, said some 50 armed men arrived at the Marawi City police station in Barangay West Marinaut at around 12:10 a.m. and immediately disarmed policemen on duty.

Macasero said the rebels then shot and killed the brother-in-law of Panapan, identified only as Malik, who was also inside the police station, before setting lose two comrades who were arrested last week for illegal possession of firearms.

The police identified the two arrested rebels as Johanne Cader and Mesron Borodan.

Macasero said the guerrillas then fled with Panapan on two speedboats that sped off toward Nusa Island on Lake Lanao. The boats were moored and waiting some 150 meters from the police station.

“He was being used as human shield. We have mounted an operation against them,” Macasero said in a telephone in terview.

Macasero said contrary to earlier reports, the attackers were followers of another MILF commander and not of Abdurahman Macapaar or “Commander Bravo.”

“They were the followers of a disgruntled MILF commander operating in the eastern side of Lanao del Sur,” he said.

Macasero said Macapaar was angry about the raid “because it might affect the peace process,” he said, referring to ongoing peace talks between the MILF and the administration of President Benigno Aquino III.

Al Haq, spokesperson of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, said he was still gathering details on the raid but added that the rebel group had been demanding the release of the arrested rebels because they were covered by the ceasefire agreement.

He said that based on initial data he had gathered, the unnamed rebel commander grew impatient over the continued incarceration of two of his followers.

He said the MILF was not condoning the attack.

“The MILF leadership and the government are doing (their) best to resolve the issue and to ensure the safe release of Panapan,” Al Haq said.

The Marawi City raid occurred just as government and rebel negotiators resumed the talks, aimed at ending the decades-old Moro rebellion, in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

Meanwhile, in Carmen, North Cotabato, unidentified armed men also stormed a police detachment on Thursday evening.

A member of the local neighborhood watch was killed while two other persons, including a police officer, were injured in the 8 p.m. raid that took place in Barangay Ugalingan, according to Gov. Emmylou Mendoza of North Cotabato.

Superintendent Danilo Peralta, North Cotabato police chief, said the police were still trying to determine the identity of the armed men. He admitted that MILF rebels operate in the the village.

However, Peralta said the police could not make conclusions at this time because other armed groups, including cattle rustlers, also operate in the area. The communist New People’s Army also operates in some villages in Carmen.

“The motive remains unknown; we can only surmise this was purely harassment,” Peralta said.

(Reports from Richel Umel, Allan Nawal, Karlos Manlupig and Edwin Fernandez, Inquirer Mindanao; Julliane Love De Jesus, INQUIRER.net)