Military officials laud arrest of 11 Maute suspects

LANAO DEL SUR  —  Top security officials were elated with how ethnic Maranaws helped bust a suspected 11-member special operations team of the Maute terror group in Marogong town on Monday morning.

Major Gen Carlito Galvez, Jr., commander of the Western Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, on Tuesday said Maranaw villagers provided authorities ample information that hastened the arrest of the militants and the confiscation of their firearms.

Suspected extremists Abdulah Daos, Nasif Esmael, Gutingon Alah, Tayro Mamanoc, Ekmad Esmail, Alvin Adam, Monib Gutumongan, Ibrahim Caronan, Cayrodin Ditarongan, Camsi Lao, and Gaso Mazo Badua are now in the custody of the police, to be prosecuted for illegal possession of firearms.

Soldiers and policemen recovered from them assault rifles, an M60 machinegun, a 60 millimeter mortar launcher and schematic mechanical and circuit diagrams for fabrication of improvised explosive devices.

The 11 terror suspects were cornered after dawn Monday in  Barangay Romagondong in Marogong by personnel of the Army’s 6th Infantry Battalion (6th IB) and agents from the Police Regional Office-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (PRO-ARMM) and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.

Galvez and the director of PRO-ARMM, Chief Supt. Reuben Theodore Sindac, had separately lauded local officials in Marogong and their constituent-barangay leaders for helping neutralize the group.

Community elders have confirmed that the 11 gunmen were involved in large-scale drug trafficking and clandestine propagation of marijuana plants whose proceeds they remit to the central leadership core of the Maute group.

The Maute, also known as Dawlah Islamiya Philippines, is operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

It was founded more than two years ago by radical siblings Omar and Abdullah Maute and is using the black ISIS flag as its revolutionary banner.

“Our men on the ground would not have learned of their presence in Barangay Romagondong if not for the patriotic, very vigilant peace-loving Muslims in the municipality," Galvez said.

Major Gen. Arnel Dela Vega, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said they will extend special citations to the soldiers involved in the arrest of the now detained 11 Maute terrorists.

The 6th IB, which is based in Malabang town in Lanao del Sur, and its mother-unit, the 603rd Brigade, are both under Dela Vega’s operational control.

Dela Vega said the arrest of the 11 terrorists in a joint Army-police operation was a tacit show of how authorities and civilian leaders can push together the domestic counter-terrorism thrust of President Rodrigo Duterte forward.

The successful anti-Maute operation in Barangay Romagondong was launched a day after the culmination of a three-day summit in Cotabato City among moderate Muslim clerics from across ARMM.

The ARMM covers Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, both in mainland Mindanao, and the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.

The summit was organized jointly by the office of ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman and the regional government’s Darul Iftah, also known as "House of Opinions."

The ARMM Darul Iftah, a religious advisory body, is comprised of Islamic theologians from different provinces in the autonomous region, among them graduates of religious schools in the Middle East and North Africa.

The three-day activity was capped off with a unanimous manifestation of support by participants  to the efforts of Duterte in preventing the spread in Mindanao of fanatically misguided Islamic militants espousing the use of violence in seeking redress and fomenting hatred towards non-Muslims.