SAF member who survived Mamasapano clash becomes talk of the town

MAMASAPANO, Maguindanao - There is a tale of a policeman’s bravery and wit that made him live through the deadly January 25 encounter here between a police contingent and Moro rebels that local folks cannot stop talking about.

Superstitious villagers even keep saying the survivor, a member of the police’s elite Special Action Force, could be wearing a powerful “agimat,” which means amulet, that he managed to shoot his way out from the scene, killing five members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front before escaping to a peasant village a kilometer away.

“Ang galing no'ng pulis. Maraming nakakitang nakipagbarilan muna siya sa mga rebeldeng nakaharang sa kanyang dadaanan at nakapatay ng lima sa kanila bago siya nakalusot,” said a community leader, who asked not to be identified.

Other sources said the brave policeman was in a group positioned along a river in southeast of Mamasapano, about a kilometer away from the hideout of slain Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan, which MILF rebels attacked from the other bank of the waterway and from a nearby corn field in their left flank.

Most of the cadavers of the 44 SAF members killed in the encounter were recovered by police and military rescuers in the same area.

A villager, who confessed to his being a long-time supporter of the MILF, said the policeman was firing his rifle from one side to another as he assaulted a group of about 10 MILF guerillas blocking a farm trail connecting the scene of the encounter to the center of Barangay Tukanalipao, Mamasapano.

“He killed five of the rebels as he shot his way out, collected all of their firearms one after another and escaped,” said a barangay official.

Witnesses said the policeman took off his uniform, rolled over a shallow muddy crevice in a corn field to cover his body with mud, slung an M-16 rifle with an insignia of the MILF’s 105th Base Command and made a dash to a group of houses in west of Barangay Tukanalipao.

“May mga nakasalubong siyang mga rebelede at mga magsasaka pero hindi na siya pinansin kasi yung isang dala niyang baril ay may nakatatak ng 105th Base Command,” a driver of a passenger motorcycle said.

The policeman took at gunpoint a bicycle of peasant fleeing from the scene before turning over to its owner one of the guns he had collected from the rebels he had killed.

“Ang sabi daw eh kapalit 'yun ng bisikleta. Pero tinanggalan niya muna ng bala at magazine yung baril bago niya ini-abot doon sa may ari ng bisikleta,” a source said, in the presence of lawyer Anwar Malang, regional local government secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Barangay folks said the policeman pedaled his way through a corn field before reaching a newly-concreted portion of a farm-to-market road connecting Barangay Tukanalipao to the town proper of Mamasapano.

The daring policeman was eventually rescued by team of soldiers, policemen and local officials helping evacuate dead and wounded SAF members away from Barangay Tukanalipao.

Community elders said the 10-hour running firefights between SAF members, who had neutralized Marwan before dawn of January 25, first erupted in Barangay Inog-og before spreading to Mamasapano’s adjoining Barangays Pidsandawan and Tukanalipao.

“Tatlong lugar ang pinangyarihan ng barilan,” said a peasant named Samsodin.

An owner of a rice store in Barangay Tukanalipao said Marwan and his cohort, Abdul Basit Usman, have resided for about three years in Barangay Inog-og before SAF men arrived in the area last January 25.

Marwan, a Malaysian national, has links with Asian terrorist organizations that have connections with the Al-Qaeda. 

Usman, who is of ethnic Maguindanaon descent, was said to have trained in handling of explosives and fabrication of improvised bombs in Peshawar, Pakistan and Kandahar, Afganistan during the early 1990s.  

The January 25 encounter here left 44 SAF members and 18 MILF guerillas dead.

Local officials had confirmed to ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman and Etta Rosales, chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights that four civilians were killed while six other innocent villagers were wounded in the hostilities.

The incident also caused the dislocation of more than a thousand peasant families.

Hataman and Rosales toured the scene of the encounter Wednesday morning to talk to witnesses and community elders.

Hataman and Rosales had both urged the peace panels of the government and the MILF not to let the incident stifle the Mindanao peace process.