‘Probe links of Kidapawan bombing brains with MILF’

COTABATO CITY — Muslim religious leaders in North Cotabato called on the Provincial Peace and Order Council yesterday to look deeper into reports that the alleged mastermind of the Oct. 10 bombing in Kidapawan City belongs to a special operations group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The suspect, Datu Musin Mamintal, surrendered to Col. Cardoza Luna, commander of the Army’s 602nd Infantry Brigade, over the weekend. He was a former mayoral candidate in Pikit town.

Mamintal, according to Muslim preachers in the neighboring towns of Pikit and Pagalungan in Maguindanao, was allegedly seen meeting with MILF leaders in the Liguasan Marsh, a known lair of Moro guerrillas and kidnap-for-ransom gangs identified with the Pentagon kidnapping syndicate.

The bombing of Kidapawan’s public transport terminal left six people dead and at least 24 others, including children, wounded.

"The police and the military should do everything to check the reports circulating since Saturday that Mamintal has strong links with both the MILF and the Pentagon," said a prominent Muslim grains trader in Pikit, some 60 kilometers north of this city.

A Muslim preacher in Kabacan, North Cotabato, said Task Force Lion Hunter, an inter-agency group organized by North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol to run after the Kidapawan bombers, claimed that Mamintal could also be responsible for earlier bomb attacks on buses plying the Cotabato-Davao route.

Mamintal was tagged as the Kidapawan bombing’s mastermind by his alleged cohort Datu Ali Sultan, whom Task Force Lion Hunter arrested in his hideout on Datu Ingkal street in Kidapawan City last Oct. 16.

Sultan was identified in a police line-up by two female witnesses. Charges of multiple murder and multiple frustrated murder have been filed against him and other suspects.

President Arroyo presented Sultan and two other suspects, Abdulgani Samama and Uldarico Monserati Jr., alias Jun Palma, to the media at Camp Crame last Saturday.

Piñol told reporters that the bombing, which the military initially tagged as a "terrorist attack," was actually part of an extortion plot against the Weena Bus Co.