Authorities foil entry of Maute militants to hinterland Maguindanao town

MAGUINDANAO --- Authorities on Thursday arrested five members of the Maute terror group and seized six vehicles they planned to hide somewhere in Barira town in Maguindanao.One of the arrested militants, Jessy Vincent Orihinal, a former policeman, was implicated in the September 2, 2016 bombing in Davao City that left 15 dead and injured more than 60 others.Orihinal and his companions, Ibrahim Arumpac, Hamza Bagul, Musa Rasamallah and Mohammad Said Biniday, are now all detained, undergoing tactical interrogation.Senior Supt. Agustin Tello, director of the Maguindanao provincial police, said the five men were arrested Thursday in a series of operations in Barangay Nabalawag in Barira by combined policemen and personnel of the Army’s 37thInfantry Battalion.Local officials in Lanao del Sur, a component-province of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, confirmed on Friday that all five of them are active members of the Maute group.The operation that led to their arrest was based on confidential information relayed to the Barira municipal police by informants, among them ethnic Maranaw and Iranun Muslim preachers.Police investigators told reporters the tipsters are rabidly against the Maute group for its un-Islamic practices and for enforcing a Taliban-style Sharia justice system local folks detest for being primitive and barbaric.Army intelligence sources said the suspects were to hide their six vehicles somewhere in Barira, which is nearest to the border of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur provinces.Members of the Maute group, also known as the Dawlah Islamiya, are on the run for three weeks now following a 12-day Army operation that drove them out of their bastion, the hinterland Butig town in the first district of Lanao del Sur.The government offensive was launched after about a hundred fanatical Maute gunmen stormed and looted villages in the center of Butig in late November.The vehicles seized from the now detained militants, a white Toyota Tamaraw FX (ULB-358), a gray Mitsubishi Adventure (DSL-162), a white Mitsubishi Montero (AEX-783), a white Toyota Fortuner (TDQ-440), a silver Toyota Fortuner (TQK-892) and a Toyota Hi-Ace van without license plates are now in the custody of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-ARMM.Tello said the CIDG-ARMM and the Traffic Management Group of the Philippine National Police are now validating the ownership and registration of each of the impounded vehicles.Guerillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front shot dead just two weeks ago five Maute gunmen and wounded seven others as they tried to retreat towards an MILF enclave near Buldon town in Maguindanao from Butig to elude pursuing soldiers.The government and the MILF are bound to mutually cooperate in neutralizing criminals and terrorists in potential flashpoint areas by an interim ceasefire accord crafted by negotiators of both sides in Cagayan de Oro City in July 1997.Officials of different municipal peace and order councils in Lanao del Sur earlier said even members of the Moro National Liberation Front, which forged a final peace pact with Malacañang on September 2, 1996, have also been guarding their government-recognized camps from intrusion by the outlawed Maute group.The Maute group, boasting of allegiance to the Independent State of Iraq and Syria, was established two years ago by siblings Abdullah and Omar Maute, scions of a big ethnic Maranaw clan in Butig.The Maute brothers had intermittently studied Islamic theology in Jordan, in Syria and in Lebanon while employed as contract workers in the United Arab Emirates.