Maute matriarch faces charges for guns, bombs found in house

LANAO DEL SUR, Philippines – Authorities are readying charges against the mother the Maute terror group's founders for bombs and guns that were seized from her house.

 

Soldiers and police found improvised explosive devices and unlicensed guns in the house of Farhana Maute in Marawi City in a raid aided by local officials. 

 

Farhana is the mother of siblings Abdullah and Omar Maute, founders of the Dawlah Islamiya, also known as the Maute terror group, now sowing havoc in the hinterland Butig town in the first district of Lanao del Sur.

 

The group, which has pledged loyalty to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, has been using the ISIS flag as its banner.

 

The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group’s office in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the Army’s 65th Infantry Battalion and the Lanao del Sur provincial police also found guns in four nearby houses owned by relatives of the two fanatical jihadists.

 

Personnel of the 65th IB, backed by Simba armored vehicles, provided cover while police and Army intelligence agents searched the houses, where several suspects were also arrested.

 

A member of the elite police Special Action Force was injured when a booby trap went off in one of the houses being searched.

 

Senior Superintendent Agustin Tello, Lanao del Sur provincial police director, said investigators are now preparing criminal charges against the owners of the houses.

 

The raiding team that recovered the arms cache was armed with a warrant to search the houses of the Maute clan matriarch and five other relatives, Abdullah Romato Maute, Mohammad Kyayam Maute, Hamsah Romato Maute, Abdulazis Romato Maute and Mahathir Romato Maute.

 

All of them remain at large and are said to have fled prior to the November 25 incursions of Maute gunmen into the town proper of Butig, which sparked hostilities and caused the displacement of more than 3,000 ethnic Maranaw families.

 

The siblings Abdullah and Omar established the militant Dawlah Islamiya in 2015. The fanatical group has since been attacking farm communities in Butig, from whose residents they mulct “protection money” in the guise of “zakat,” which means alms in Arabic, to sustain its activities.

 

Relatives said both leaders studied Islamic theology in Jordan and in Syria intermittently while employed as contract workers in the United Arab Emirates.