Wife of new Maute terror cell leader nabbed in GenSan

GENERAL SANTOS CITY, Philippines — The police arrested here on Monday morning the wife of the new leader of the Maute terror group in a series of operations that left a wanted bomb-maker dead.

Senior Superintendent Raul Supiter of the city police office said Tuesday Nafisah Pundog, spouse of Owaida Marohombsar, also known as Abdulmajib and “Abu Dar,” is now guarded tightly to forestall a possible rescue by militants operating in the fashion of the Islamic State.

Pundog was arrested in a raid by personnel of the General Santos City police and the Regional Police Office-12 at about 6:00 a.m. Monday in Barangay Apopong here.

She is married to the elusive Abu Dar, the Meranao figurehead of about 50 or so remnants of the Maute terror group holding out in the forested hinterlands of Lanao del Sur, a component province of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga City and its component-unit covering Lanao del Sur and Marawi City, the 103rd Brigade, had separately confirmed that Marohombsar assumed leadership of the Maute terror group after the death, one after another, of its founders, siblings Omarkhayam and Abdullah Maute, in encounters with soldiers in Marawi City in October last year.

The arrest of Pundog was preceded by a joint police-military operation in Barangay Uhaw here shortly aftermidnight Sunday, supervised by Supiter and Morales, that resulted in the death of her relative, Navij, also surnamed Pundog, a Maute bomb-maker.

Najiv was reportedly involved in the May 23 to Oct. 16, 2017 siege of Marawi City by combined Maute and Abu Sayyaf gunmen under Isnilon Hapilon.

Hapilon, born and raised in Basilan, was also killed during the five-month conflict that resulted in the deaths of hundreds, caused the displacement of more than 300,000 innocent villagers and left many historic, centuries-old Maranao dwelling enclaves there in ruins.

Supiter said the police contingent dispatched to arrest Najiv peacefully in his hideout in Barangay Uhaw here neutralized him immediately when he opened fire and wounded badly PO3 Jerry Feo.

Probers from the General Santos City police and PRO-12 recovered in his lair materials for improvised explosive devices and fragmentation grenades.

They also found a 9 millimeter Glock pistol beside the cadaver of Najiv.

Najiv was among dozens of suspected terrorists and supporters listed in the Arrest Order 1 issued by the Department of National Defense after President Rodrigo Duterte placed Mindanao under martial law hours after the bloody Maute and Abu Sayyaf incursion in Marawi City began.

Police investigators and Army intelligence agents are now interrogating the wife of Abu Dar, the self-proclaimed successor of the slain Maute brothers, also both Maranaos, who established an Islamic State-inspired terror cell in Lanao del Sur in 2015 that they originally named Dawlah Islamiya.