COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Police here on Sunday dawn arrested a suspected kidnap gang leader implicated in some 30 abductions in Central Mindanao and in Thursday’s bloody daytime pawnshop heist in Koronadal City.
The suspect, Khadafy Guimelon, also known as Commander Pilandok, ranks third in the “most wanted” list of kidnappers of the Philippine National Police Anti-Kidnapping Group (AKG) in Southern Philippines.
Guimelon was nabbed somewhere along Pansacala Street in a residential district west of Cotabato City.
Confidential informants confirmed Guiamelon has also been occasionally residing in a slum area behind the MC Square, a small trading complex along Sinsuat Avenue here.
Senior Supt. Rolen Balquin, city police director, said the suspect has been undergoing questioning on his reported involvement in the September 18 deadly attempt to rob the Agencia Brillantes, a pawnshop along Osmeña Street in Koronadal City.
Two security guards were killed while two responding watchmen from nearby establishments were shot and wounded as they tried to prevent the robbers’ escape. Two minors were wounded in the crossfire.
Guimelon and his followers are remnants of Central Mindanao’s once feared kidnapping syndicate led by Abogado Gado, also known as Commander Mubarak, and his notorious henchmen, Kagui Musa Ali and Mayangkang Saguile, who then led smaller kidnap gangs.
Mubarak, Ali and Saguile, all ethnic Maguindanaons, were tagged in the spate of kidnappings during the early 1990s, of more than 70 people, mostly Chinese traders engaged in big businesses in Central Mindanao.
Mubarak was killed in 1993 by policemen and Marine soldiers in Pantukan, Compostela Valley, while Ali, who was from Kabuntalan town in Maguindanao, was shot dead by motorcycle-riding gunmen near the Cotabato City supermarket area in 1999. Saguile was last reported as already suffering from a debilitating illness.
Balquin said local policemen and police agents from Koronadal City, operatives of the AKG and the Philippine Anti-Organized Crime Commission, and combatants of the Army’s 5th Special Forces Battalion arrested Guimelon based on two separate warrants for his arrest.
One of the warrants was issued by Judge George Jabido while the other came from the sala of Judge Bansawan Ebrahim of the Regional Trial Court Branches 15 and 14, both in Cotabato City, respectively.