2 suspects tag losing Maguindanao bet in school principal's slay

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Two confessed hired killers have tagged a defeated re-electionist municipal official as mastermind in the murder here last month of a school principal in a nearby town who refused to help their politician-client cheat during the May 10 polls.

Senior Superintendent Willie Dangane, director of the city police, said the suspects, Malik Ariman, 30, of Barangay Campo Muslim here and Mandi Kasubidan, 31, of Parang, Maguindanao, were caught Tuesday night by policemen while dining at a restaurant along a busy street here with the help of informants.

Kasubidan and Ariman are wanted for the May 12 killing at the downtown area of Abdulrahman Miro, principal of the Bongo Elementary School in Bongo Island, a component area of Parang, a politically hostile town in the first district of Maguindanao.

Miro was chairman of the board of election inspectors in Bongo, some five kilometers off Parang’s town proper, during the May 10 polls.

Dangane said Kasubidan and Ariman did not resist arrest and even yielded .45 caliber pistols when accosted by policemen, some of them in combat gears.

Dangane said the suspects readily confessed to their roles in the killing of the school principal at a busy area here after the May 10 local polls in Parang.

Dangane said the suspects have pointed to a defeated re-electionist municipal official in Parang as the one that paid them to neutralize Miro, an ethnic Iranon Muslim.

Dangane said the suspects have alleged that the local official paid them P50,000 to murder Miro.

Miro, according to Dangane, caught the ire of the local official for rejecting a request for him to “destroy” the precinct count optical scan machines that were used in Bongo Island, a known political stronghold of his rivals, prior to election day.

Dangane said they will file criminal charges against the local official. – With Cecille Suerte Felipe