Military: Kato group plain bandits

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines – The military will now refer to Ameril Ombra Kato and his men only as plain bandits and terrorists, not as Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), officials said yesterday.

“They have been making lives of non-combatants and civilians in areas where they operate miserable. They don’t have a clear revolutionary ideology so they are not revolutionaries, as what they assert,” said Col. Dickson Hermoso, spokesman for the Army’s 6th Infantry Division (ID), which has jurisdiction over Maguindanao, North Cotabato, and Sultan Kudarat.

Kato and a group of radical clerics, some wanted for criminal offenses, organized the BIFF in 2010 after he was booted out from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front due to insubordination and irreconcilable differences with the MILF’s central committee. He was a former senior leader of the MILF.

Hermoso said the 6th ID will continue to guard against attacks by Kato’s men and his two trusted lieutenants, Tambako and Karialan, whose followers have perpetrated more than 20 roadside bombings in Maguindanao since January.

The group’s spokesman, Abu Misry Mama, an ethnic Maguindanaon, announced yesterday that they have allied with Iraq and Syria, and support the ambition of its leader, Abu Bak’r Al-Baghdadi, to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East.

Kato’s men are notorious for their Taliban-style justice system.

Hermoso said Kato’s group could not qualify as a revolutionary group as they use civilians as human shields during encounters with government security forces and extort money and goods from them to sustain their needs.

“They launch attacks during Ramadan, causing massive dislocation of civilians,” Hermoso said.

He said soldiers pursuing bandits that attacked this week the Army detachments in Maguindanao’s Sharif Saidona and Datu Piang towns found shabu in plastic sachets and drug paraphernalia along the gunmen’s escape routes.

“That’s an indication that they are hooked on illegal drugs, too,” Hermoso said.