Sulu exit, entry points tightly guarded due to MNLF threats

COTABATO CITY – The Sulu provincial police have sealed all entry and exit points in the province due to threats of another mutiny by forces loyal to jailed Moro National Liberation Front founder Nur Misuari.

Chief Superintendent Joel Goltiao, director of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police, said they have been receiving persistent feedback from informants that MNLF members loyal to Misuari have been massing at Sulu’s Talipao town, as if gearing up for attacks.

“We have been informed that they have a plan to create noise, attract attention and pressure the government to release Chairman Misuari from detention,” Goltiao told reporters.

A former governor of ARMM, Misuari has been detained since 2002 for leading a failed mutiny in Jolo, capital of Sulu, two weeks before the region’s fourth regional elections, which he opposed fearing it would boot him out of power.

In a report to Goltiao’s office in Parang, Shariff Kabunsuan, Sulu’s police director Superintendent Jul Asirim Kasim, said Misuari’s men planned last week to simultaneously attack military positions in Barangay Bayug in Talipao, a secluded town in Sulu.

“We have not lowered our guard even if it’s more than a week now since the alleged plan was hatched. All police units in the entire province are on full alert,” Kasim said.

Goltiao, for his part, clarified that it was respectable sources in several Sulu towns that informed the provincial police of the alleged plan of Misuari’s men to perpetrate the attacks to drumbeat their demand for his release from detention.

Misuari twice failed to attend the tripartite review of the Sept. 2, 1996 GRP-MNLF peace pact, first in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in November, and subsequently, in Istanbul, Turkey early this year, due to his failure to secure permission from the judiciary to participate in the two succeeding activities.

The three-way effort of evaluating the implementation of the 11-year-old peace accord – involving Malaca­ñang, the MNLF and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) – is aimed at resolving peacefully all of the misunderstandings on the implementation of some of its major provisions.

The peace pact paved the way for the integration into the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police of more than 7,000 qualified MNLF members, but the front keeps  ranting on the alleged non-involvement of its members in governance.

Sources from the military’s intelligence community said Misuari’s men hatched the plan to perpetrate the attacks on police and military installations in Sulu during the March 18 celebration of the MNLF’s founding anniversary in one of the towns in Sulu.

Police reported that some 300 rogue MNLF members converged in a village of Talipao town and attended by rebel leaders – fugitive Habier Malik and Kaid Adjibun last week.

Some Abu Sayyaf commanders also reportedly attended the meeting.

However, the police authorities, quoting civilian information could not say if the meeting could be part of the plans of simultaneous attacks.                  

The police and military could not as well confirm if the series of liquidation since last week on victims who were either military or civilians with military relatives was part of the atrocity. – With Roel Pareño