Suspect in killing of Oblate priest falls

COTABATO CITY – Members of the 22nd Marine Company arrested yesterday a suspect in the killing of Oblate priest Rey Roda during a bungled kidnapping almost a year ago on Tabawan Island in Tawi-Tawi.

The suspect, Annih Salih, an ethnic Tausog who hails from Siasi, Sulu, did not resist arrest after sensing that Marines led by 1Lt. Ramil Angcap had surrounded his hideout in Tabawan, an island populated by Tausogs and Samals and where the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) congregation has had a humanitarian mission for some 30 years now.

Witnesses tagged Salih as one of the 10 armed men who attempted to kidnap Roda in an OMI convent in Tabawan, which is under the municipality of South Ubian. Roda was shot and hacked when he resisted.

The Marines have turned over Salih to the Tawi-Tawi police for interrogation.

Roda was the third Oblate missionary killed in the South. Between 1997 and early 2000, Sulu Bishop Benjamin de Jesus and Fr. Ben Inocencio were shot dead in separate attacks in downtown Jolo, capital town of Sulu. – John Unson