16 more ISIS-inspired terrorists surrender
Mindanao Peace Process • 12:15 PM Sun Jan 26, 2020
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By:
John M. Unson
A member of BIFF hands over his rifle to 6th Infantry Division assistant commander Brig. Juvy Max Uy during ceremonies Saturday. (Photo courtesy of Minister Naguib Sinarimbo)
COTABATO CITY --- Sixteen members of the outlawed Dawlah Islamiya surrendered to the Army’s 6th Infantry Division on Saturday.
The 16 gunmen yielded through the efforts of municipal officials in Maguindanao province and the Army’s 33rd and 40th Infantry Battalions, both component-units of the Army’s 601st Brigade under 6th ID.
The group’s leader, Wazire Kumpas, an ethnic Maguindanaon, told reporters they agreed to turn themselves in voluntarily due to 6th ID’s unrelenting campaign against local terror groups operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The Dawlah Islamiya, also known as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, is using the black ISIS flag as revolutionary banner.
The surrender rite, held at Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat town and presided over by Brig. Gen. Juvymax Uy, was witnessed by lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, who is local government minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The office of Sinarimbo has a rehabilitation program, the Tulong ng Gobyerno sa Nangangailangan, or TUGON, for former violent extremists that the Bangsamoro government is now helping reintroduce to mainstream society.
Units of 6th ID had worked out the return to the fold of law of more than a hundred Dawlah Islamiya members in the past 36 months.