Monday, December 22, 2008 Arroyo wants arrest of Bravo, others By Froilan Gallardo
THE police and military based in Iligan City were caught by surprise by the hastily called command conference at the Lumbia Airport VIP lounge last Thursday.
Furious over last Wednesday's bombings in the southern Philippine city that killed three people and hurt 53 others, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo called the region's police and military officials to the conference.
Chief Superintendent Teodorico Capuyan had to stop midway in Manticao town, Misamis Oriental as frantic officials of the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) phoned him that the Presidential chopper will fetch him.
The chopper landed in the dusty factory grounds of Pacific Group Metals Corporation, (formerly Ferrochrome Philippines) much to the delight to the residents.
Iligan City Mayor Laurence Cruz and Representative Vicente Valmonte came in a two-car convoy to join Capuyan in the Presidential chopper that whisked them to Lumbia Airport.
"President Arroyo gave implied orders," Major General Ricardo David, chief of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, said when Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro asked him about the meeting.
David said President Arroyo asked them why rebel commanders Ameril Ombra Kato, Abdullah Macapaar alias Bravo, and Aleem Sulaiman Pangalian were not arrested four months after their men went on a rampage in North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte provinces.
"The President directed us to get either one of them [fugitive lawless Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels]. She was not interested on their followers. She wants these commanders themselves," said David, adding: "The President wants results."
David said Arroyo was upset that despite the approval of the P10-billion supplemental budget for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the commanders have remained scot-free.
Arroyo also approved the request from Valmonte to activate 100 Army reservists in Iligan City and ordered David to deploy a company of soldiers to help the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office guard the malls, churches and public places.
But in order to get Kato, Bravo and Pangalian, the Armed Forces must rely on good intelligence work and surgical strikes by their elite units, the Scout Rangers and the US-trained counter-terror unit Light Reaction Company (LRC), said David.
"We need to pinpoint their exact locations and stage the assault to capture them. We don't need collateral damage on the civilians," David said.
Kato, Bravo and Pangalian, who carried P10-million bounties for their capture, are giving pursuing soldiers a hard time.
Discarding their old military tactics, these rebel leaders are employing an effective guerilla campaign that already tied down a bulk of the armed forces in Central Mindanao and Lanao del Norte.
Denial
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) denied Thursday any involvement in the bombings in Iligan City.
It said the military was gearing up for larger offensives against the MILF using these bombings as "an excuse."
Citing "A1 intelligence reports," the MILF said members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) Criminal Investigation Division Group (CIDG) were involved in these bombings, especially the one that exploded on the eve of the aborted visit of President Arroyo in Shariff Kabunsuan more than a week ago.
"They travel by motorcycles and carry backpacks which contained these improvised explosive devices (IED), similar MILF's made [bomb]," the report added.
The MILF said the bombings of Christian churches in Kabacan in North Cotabato and Isulan in Sultan Kudarat were perpetrated by the New Ilaga Movement headed by a former mayor of a town in North Cotabato.
"The purpose of these bombings of churches is to drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians in Mindanao and to color the conflict in Mindanao as religious confrontation," the MILF on its website Luwaran.com.
It said North Cotabato vice governor Emmanuel Piñol is "the main prime mover of the new Ilaga group." The MILF also accused Senator and presidential aspirant, Manuel Roxas III, as the primary financier of the group.
However, Piñol have repeatedly denied this accusation.
For his part, Armed Forces spokesperson Colonel Ernesto Torres dismissed the MILF report as "speculative, baseless and preposterous."
