MILF vows to punish Marawi City police's attackers

MARAWI CITY, Philippines – The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has vowed to punish the guerrillas who sprung last week from the city police office their two companions arrested for illegal possession of firearms.

Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF’s vice chairman for political affairs, said Thursday that the central leadership is now investigating the incident, in keeping with their preliminary security agreements with government, which binds both sides to cooperate in addressing peace and security issues in flashpoint areas in the Mindanao.

Some 50 rebels stormed the city police office on December 6 and set free detained guerrillas Metron Borodan and Jovani Cader, and took at gunpoint Supt. Christopher Panapan as they fled.

Panapan is the chief of the Marawi City police. The gunmen shot dead Panapan’s brother-in-law, who was also at the police station when they attacked, before they spirited the officer to a town in the second district of Lanao del Sur.

Panapan was set free some 10 hours later through the intercession of the government-MILF joint ceasefire committee and local executives in Lanao del Sur.

"We have procedures on penalizing MILF members who violate laws of the organization and the existing ceasefire agreement between us and the government," Jaafar said.

Jaafar said the incident must not affect the cordiality of the on-going GPH-MILF peace talks.

Jaafar said the MILF’s central leadership is also keen on subjecting to disciplinary action a group of guerrillas holding captive five villagers in Baloi, Lanao del Sur.

The five villagers are locked in a “rido” (clan war) with their captors, according to reports reaching the MILF's ceasefire committee.

Jaafar said they will not allow any member of the MILF to go unpunished if proven to have transgressed their group’s July 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities with government.

The accord is being jointly enforced and monitored by the GPH-MILF joint ceasefire committee, and the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team, which is comprised of soldiers and policemen from Malaysia, Brunei, Libya and Indonesia, and conflict resolution experts from Japan, Norway and the European Union.