Wrong 'Kato aide' nabbed?

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Local officials have asked for a deeper probe on the exact identity of an imam arrested here Tuesday night by a police-Army team on suspicion that he is a henchman of wanted Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) commander Ameril Ombra Kato.

Cotabato’s chief legal officer Nasser Sinarimbo said Alimudin Tambilawan, who was nabbed at the house here of his second wife, is not Camarudin Hadji Ali, a battalion commander in the MILF’s 105th Base Command.

Sinarimbo said Tambilawan is an ustadz (Islamic theologian) who has no criminal record in the city.

Officials of the barangay where Tambilawan was arrested said they knew him as a peace-loving preacher who has many friends in the community.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu also said the arrest was a case of “mistaken identity,” insisting that it was not Ali, a “trusted lieutenant” of Kato, who was arrested.

Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said operatives of their anti-crime Task Force Tugis and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) were certain it was Ali who they had arrested, not an innocent preacher.

Ponce said Ali is also known as Commander Mudi in the MILF.

CIDG sources said the suspect did not resist arrest when he sensed that Army and police operatives had surrounded the house of his second wife.

Police and Army intelligence officials said Ali was with Kato when MILF forces attacked farming villages in North Cotabato’s adjoining Aleosan and Midsayap towns, burned more than 500 houses and killed several villagers.

The attacks came after the aborted signing in August last year by the government and MILF peace panels of the controversial memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain.

The agreement was to be the basis for the setting up of a Moro territory in the South that the MILF would have governed through its proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity.

Kato carries a P10-million bounty for leading the attacks in North Cotabato. – With Ramil Bajo