MNLF rebel-turned-pol, wife, brod die in ambush

SULTAN KUDARAT — A former Moro rebel leader-turned-politician was shot dead with his wife and brother last Sunday as pre-election violence mounted throughout the country, the military said.

Jasmin Drah, a former commander of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), was killed near the Sultan Kudarat town of Palimbang, military reports said.

According to a nationwide police tally, at least 71 people have been killed since December in violence related to the May 10 general elections, already surpassing the death toll in the last elections in 1998.

Drah was running for a position in the Palimbang town council and was a senior member of the MNLF, a former Muslim separatist rebel group that signed a peace agreement with the government in 1996 in exchange for the creation of a Muslim autonomous region.

Police suspect the attackers belonged to a local gang called the Abu Sofia, said Lt. Col. Renoir Pascua, information chief of the Armed Forces’ Southern Command.

The Abu Sofia is known to have links with the Abu Sayyaf, an extremist rebel group responsible for several kidnappings and killings in the south.

Pascua said at least 10 Abu Sofia members led by a certain Alu Binago Tacbil, ambushed the victims, who were on board a motorcycle, in Barangay Butril at about 2 p.m. last Sunday.

Drah, he said, had just come from a campaign sortie in Barangay Milbuk. Investigation showed that Drah was able to return fire with his caliber .45 pistol.

Authorities said the ambush-killing was politically motivated. They, however, refused to identify the local candidates who the Abu Sofia is supporting. — With AFP