Military helps in burial of slain BIFF members

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - The military on Tuesday helped provide a decent burial for four bandits killed by Marines in an encounter in Mamasapano town last Sunday, despite their having killed 10 police commandos in an attack on January 25.

The slain members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), Jack Norodin, Kaharudin Pendatu, Tahir Sapal and Murad Duwang, all wore something they took from members of the police’s Special Action Force they had killed after a raid at Inog-og area in west of Mamasapano, where the policemen had earlier gunned down Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, most known as Marwan.

Marwan was touted as the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia.

At least 44 policemen, 18 members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and five civilians were killed in the January 25 encounters in three barangays in Mamasapano.

The BIFF's central leadership, which ambushed a group of SAF men retreating from the scene, earlier bragged about killing 10 policemen, whose uniforms and firearms bandits took with them as they fled after the shootout.

Pendatu, Norodin, Sapal and Duwang all hailed from Mamasapano, where Marwan had stayed and trained some 300 Maranaw, Tausog, Maguindanaon and Yakan recruits in handling and fabrication of explosives for more than three years.

Army officials said the four bandits were felled by snipers of the 26th and 36th Marine Companies, which broke through the BIFF’s defense cordon encircling the group’s major enclave at Barangay Dasikil in southwest of Mamasapano and hoisted the Philippine flag at its center five hours after the operation was launched.

The remains of the four bandits were laid to rest with the help of Mayor Zamzamin Ampatuan of Rajah Buayan, also in the second district of Maguindanao, and a non-government organization engaged in peace-building projects involving members of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and local Muslim communities.

“I have to do a heavy humanitarian role. I was asked to help,” Ampatuan, who is involved in extensive missionary and peace-building programs in his town, said.

The cadavers of the four bandits were even given final cleansing rites, bathed and wrapped in white linen, by Army clerics, among them the command imam of the 6th Infantry Division, Captain Mujib Ladjabuan, a Tausog.

Norodin and Pendatu were followers of the radical jihadist Imam Mohammad Tambako, a pioneer leader of the BIFF, but recently renamed his group Justice Islamic Movement, which is more known to mayors in Maguindanao as Saifullah, which some of them interpreted as “sword of God.”

It was in the BIFF enclave in Barangay Dasikil, now guarded by Marines, where Tambako and his men had assembled improvised roadside bombs and explosives they used in recent attacks in the adjoining Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and North Cotabato provinces.

Among the deadly bombings the BIFF perpetrated in recent months were at least three successive attacks late last year in North Cotabato’s Kabacan, Pikit and Mlang towns, which left a total of eight people dead and injured about a hundred others.

Sapal and Duwang were known as errands of the four Indonesians tagging along with the elusive ethnic Maguindanaon bomb-maker Abdulbasit Usman, who was wounded during the January 25 raid by members of SAF operatives at Inog-og that resulted to the death of Marwan.

Ladjabuan, who is also caretaker of the 6th ID’s mosque near the Maguindanao Airport in Datu Odin Sinsuat town, said their commander, Major Gen. Edmundo Pangilinan, has a standing order to all units under him to facilitate decent burials for every gunman neutralized in the government’s on-going law enforcement operation against the BIFF.

“The guidance is for us to find way to turn over their remains to their families after having been given traditional Islamic prayer rites,” Ladjabuan said.

Relatives that claimed the cadavers of the four BIFF members the Marines had killed had asked not to be photographed along with their remains.

Soldiers had recovered from the BIFF camp in Barangay Dasikil materials for fabrication of improvised explosives, addresses of public terminals the group was to bomb, ammunition for assorted rifles, firearms and live shoulder-fire 40-millimeter grenade projectiles.

Barangay officials said more than 30 BIFF bandits have been killed in encounters with pursuing soldiers since last March 1, but most of them were carried away by their companions as they escaped deep into the 220,00-hectare Liguasan Delta at the tri-boundary of Maguindanao, North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat.