No clues yet on ambush of former mayor

COTABATO CITY — Probers are still facing a blank wall on Thursday night’s ambush-killing of a former mayor of Palimbang, Sultan Kudarat, known in Central Mindanao as an "adopted son" of former President Fidel Ramos.

Senior Superintendent Sangacala Dampac, this city’s police chief, said the ambush of former mayor Karim Kling Daud in a residential district here could be related either to politics or rivalry in his shipping business.

Three of Daud’s security escorts, PO1 Abdulsajid Mohammad, militiaman Rodrigo Abugatal and Theng Dicaya, were also killed in the ambush, staged by at least five men wearing ski masks and armed with M-16 and M-14 assault rifles.

Daud’s relatives are convinced that a political rival of the former mayor could have masterminded the ambush.

While mayor of Palimbang, a coastal municipality in Sultan Kudarat, from 1998 to 2001, Daud campaigned extensively against the illegal cutting of trees in watersheds, getting the ire of some politicians allegedly involved in the smuggling of forest products.

Daud, owner of a fleet of small passenger and cargo vessels plying the Pagadian-Cotabato and Cotabato-Sultan Kudarat routes, lost in last year’s mayoral elections to Samrod Mamansual, a former foreign-trained commander of the Moro National Liberation Front.

Daud and his three aides were on their way home to the Espino residential area here, on board a blue Mitsubishi car, when they were waylaid.

Dampac said Daud earlier told him that he had been receiving death threats and promised to give more details when they met again. — John Unson