Marohombsar may reunite with cohort if...

COTABATO CITY — Notorious kidnapper Faisal Marohombsar may find himself reunited with a cashiered cohort, Ebrahim Sacandal, who helped him establish the dreaded Pentagon kidnap gang, if a local court will dismiss the latter’s case as petitioned by the same prosecutors who charged him with kidnapping last year.

Sacandal, known in Central Mindanao as Marohombsar’s strategist, was arrested in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao last March by elements of the Army’s 12th Intelligence Service Unit after a month-long surveillance. He is detained at a jail here.

Regional Trial Court Judge Emmanuel Badoy said the prosecutors handling the case of Sacandal, also known as Jun Sarat, have sought for the dismissal of his case due to "insufficient evidence."

Badoy said the prosecutors sought for the dismissal after Sacandal’s lawyer asked for a reinvestigation of the case.

"Sinabi nila (prosecutors) na wala daw sapat na ebidensiya (The prosecutors said the evidence was insufficient)," Badoy told Catholic radio station dxMS.

Badoy declined to identify the prosecutors handling Sacandal’s case.

"In most cases kapag ganyan, nadi-dismiss ang kaso (the case is dismissed), but what I can assure the public is that the court will look seriously into the case and the evidence against the suspect," Badoy said without elaborating.

Sacandal was implicated in the abduction of one of at least 20 Central Mindanao residents.

Sources from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division said they have "verified, proximate and unimpeachable information" pointing to Marohombsar, Sacandal, Kaliden Ompao and Mads Udasan as the founders of the Pentagon gang.

Ompao, also known as Teng, and Udasan are both detained at the North Cotabato provincial jail for their involvement in last year’s abduction of Zhang Zhung Quiang, a Chinese national working on a foreign-funded irrigation project in North Cotabato, his three compatriots and their Filipino interpreter.

It was in Crestville Hotel in Digos City were Marohombsar, Sacandal, Ompao and Udasan first met in 2001 and, there, agreed to call their gang Pentagon, intelligence records showed.