COTABATO CITY – Policemen nabbed at dawn yesterday a ranking, foreign-trained member of the Al-Khobar extortion ring implicated in the deadly bombing last November of a shopping mall in Kidapawan City.
The suspect, Musali Cado, 35, did not resist arrest after sensing that policemen, backed by soldiers, have surrounded his hideout in President Quirino, a remote town in Sultan Kudarat.
Cado, who reportedly underwent extensive training in the handling of explosives in Kandahar, Afganistan in the early 1990s, was one of 30 Al-Khobar gang members charged in connection with last year’s bombing of the KMCC Mall in Kidapawan City, which killed two and caused serious injuries to some 20 others.
Senior Superintendent Lester Camba, police director of North Cotabato, said Cado’s (alias Gardo) whereabouts was traced by agents with the help of civilians and local officials in President Quirino, an agricultural town, home to mixed Muslim and Christian settlers.
“The raiding team was armed with a warrant for Gardo’s arrest. Thanks to the patriotic people that helped us track him down,” Camba said.
The warrant for the arrest of Gardo and his cohorts, tagged as responsible for the bombing of a shopping mall in Kidapawan City, was issued last year by Judge Rogelio Naresmo of the Regional Trial Court Branch 13 in North Cotabato.
Camba said Cado is also known as Gardo, Musalim Abas, and Dyanggo in the Al-Khobar gang, which has owned up to the recent spate of bombings of buses and business establishments in Central Mindanao, which the group said was aimed to intimidate traders for them to shell out monthly “protection money.”