Rebels say Usman 'still hiding in Mamasapano'

MAMASAPANO, Maguindanao - A wounded foreign-trained bomb maker Abdul Basit Usman is just hiding in a marshy area in Mamasapano, Maguindanao and is planning to escape to the northern part of the vast Liguasan Delta, rebel sources said on Saturday.

Usman, an ethnic Maguindanaon and an accomplice of the slain Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan, was reportedly wounded in his arm when operatives of the police’s Special Action Force raided their hideout in Barangay Pidsandawan here before dawn of January 25.

“Marwan was killed in that raid while Abdul Basit, who was in another house about 60 meters away, was wounded when he and his companions engaged the SAF team when they heard gunshots and saw the policemen around,” a rebel, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said in the local vernacular.

Neighbors of Marwan said he was known in the municipality as “Ibz” and not by his original alias.

“People here knew him as `Ibz' and not as Marwan,” another source pointed out.

Usman was more popular here as “Teng” and not as Abdul Basit, the source added.

Villagers identified with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front said Marwan was not buried at a graveyard near an old mosque in the center of Barangay Tukanalipao as reported by a national television network.

Clerics residing around the centuries-old mosque refuted the reports purporting they facilitated Marwan's burial in a Muslim cemetery just meters away from the worship site.

“He was buried not far from his hideout, in an unmarked grave,” a driver of a passenger vehicle said.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for his being related by blood with certain commanders of the MILF here, said Marwan died from gunshot wounds in the chest.

“The SAF team that raided his house was composed of about 30 men. They were able to kill him immediately. Usman and his companions fired at another group near them, precipitating an encounter,” narrated the source.

"The wounded Usman managed to escape," the source said.

Barangay folks said Usman has still been hiding in a marshy area in Mamasapano, ready to leave if he would have the chance.

“He and Marwan stays in one house most of the time but that time he (Usman) slept in another house just near the house where the SAF members killed Marwan,” said one of them.

An owner of a small dry goods store here said Marwan had the habit of occasionally moving around Barangay Pidsandawan and deeper into the nearby Liguasan Delta at the tri-boundary of the adjoining North Cotabato, Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces, to avoid detection.

“We are convinced that there were people in the MILF that helped the police track him down because the raid was carried out at a time when he was in Barangay Pidsandawan,” the merchant pointed out.

Usman was also known here as Marwan’s interpreter and occasional “bagman.”

“Sometimes it was Usman who kept the money of Marwan,” a peasant in Barangay Pidsandawan said.

Errands of Marwan and Usman occasionally bought for them food and other provisions at the public market in Sharif Aguak, the former provincial capital, which is near the main office of the Maguindanao provincial police and the headquarters of the Army’s 1st Mechanized Brigade.

A peasant claiming to be a relative of Usman said he first went underground after working for several years in the Middle East as an electrician and an appliance repair man.

“He studied in a government technical school before he worked abroad,” the source said.

He said Usman returned to the country just as government forces were liberating MILF camps from rebel occupation after then President Joseph Estrada declared an all out war against the secessionist group.

Usman, while an OFW, was said to have undergone training in handling of explosives and fabrication of improvised bombs using materials available in guerilla arsenals such as mortar projectiles and anti-tank rockets.

He is known here for his skill in fabricating improvised blasting contraptions for home-made explosives.

“He perpetrated deadly bombings in retaliation for the military’s takeover of rebel territories in 2000,” another source said.

Rebel sources said there were talks in the past about Usman’s having been involved in the detonation in June 2005 of a vehicle packed with explosives, while parked along a busy stretch of a national highway in Sharif Aguak, as the convoy of then Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan, Sr., who was hostile to local MILF commanders, passed by.

The governor survived the attack unscathed, but eight others, who were riding in vehicles trailing his bullet-proof car, were killed in the explosion.

Usman was also implicated in a roadside bombing in nearby Datu Piang town, also in Maguindanao, on December 23, 2002, which killed Ampatuan’s son, Mayor Datu Saudi Ampatuan and more than a dozen others.

Barangay folks also hinted that Usman was also behind the setting off of a multi-cab vehicle carrying explosives at the Maguindanao airport in Awang District in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in February 2003, just days after soldiers liberated from rebel control the 3,000-hectare Buliok Complex at the border of Pagalungan, Maguindanao and Pikit, North Cotabato.

The military’s clearing of Buliok Complex from occupation by rebels, dubbed "Oplan Alab Lahi," forced the MILF’s founder, the Egyptian-trained cleric Salamat Hashim, to abandon his house in the area and relocate to Butig town in the second district of Lanao del Sur, where he died of a cardiac ailment several months later.