Abu Sayyaf terrorist with P600,000 reward on head arrested

COTABATO CITY— Policemen, backed by local executives and military intelligence agents, arrested a senior member of the Abu Sayyaf, wanted for high-profile criminal cases pending in courts, in an operation in Isabela City, Basilan on Monday, September 23.

Brig. Gen. Bowenn Joey Masauding, director of the Police Regional Office-9, and his counterpart in the Bangsamoro region, Brig. Gen. Prexy Tanggawohn, separately told reporters on Tuesday that the long-wanted Mobin Kullin is now locked in a police detention facility, awaiting prosecution.

He was cornered in a secluded spot in Barangay Tabiawan in Isabela City by combined agents of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-9 and personnel of the Isabela City Police Station and the Basilan Provincial Police Office. Isabela City is under Region 9, but is inside Basilan, a component-province of the Bangsamoro region.

Kullin carried a P600,000 reward on his head, raised through a joint order by the Department of the Interior and Local Government and the Department of National Defense.

He is wanted for a number of kidnap-for-ransom offenses, extortion and multiple murder by different courts in Basilan and in towns and cities in the Zamboanga peninsula.

Tanggawohn said local officials in Basilan, whose towns had been declared "Abu Sayyaf free" in recent months, helped the police locate Kullin in Barangay Tabiawan.

Kullin was once a henchman of Abu Sayyaf’s founder, Abdurajak Janjalani and his brother, Khadaffy and the group’s emir, Isnilon Hapilon, who were killed by state forces one after another in separate encounters from between 2007 to 2017 in different areas in Mindanao.