Former MILF ceasefire comittee head dies of heart attack

COTABATO, Philippines - An official of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) who trained recruits on guerilla warfare succumbed to cardiac arrest July 13, just as he had wished to die on the same day Imam Salamat Hashim passed away.

The 64-year-old Benjie Midtimbang died at the Cotabato Regional Medical Center here, where he was rushed by relatives after having Monday night’s iftar, the first meal after a day-long fast, when he complained of chest pain.

Midtimbang was the training director for about a decade of the MILF’s now defunct Abdurahman Bedis Memorial Military Academy in Camp Abubakar, the rebel group's original main bastion in Maguindanao, which fell on July 9, 2000 after three weeks of military ground and artillery offensives.

He had also served as chairman of the MILF’s Coordinating Committee on Cessation of Hostilities for about four years.

While with the MILF’s ceasefire committee, Midtimbang worked closely with the government’s senior liaison with the rebel group, then Army Major Dickson Hermoso, who is now a colonel serving both as spokesman and inspector-general of the 6th Infantry Division on concurrent basis.

Relatives of Midtimbang, born on Dec. 8, 1950, said it was his wish to die on the same day Salamat, founder of the MILF, passed away.

An ethnic Maguindanaon, Salamat, who studied Islamic theology at the secular Al-Azzar University in the Egyptian capital Cairo, died of a heart ailment on July 13, 2003 in Lanao del Sur’s hinterland Butig town.

Salamat died about five months after the military’s takeover of his hideout at the Buliok area in the border of Pagalungan, Maguindanao and Pikit, North Cotabato.

Midtimbang was observing the Islamic Ramadhan atonement season, where Muslims fast from dawn to dusk for one lunar cycle, about 28-29 days, at the time of his death.