For 13 years Faisal Marohombsar lived a profitable life of crime, buying protection by giving away part of his loot like Robin Hood in areas where he hid to elude pursuing lawmen.
Some of his relatives are also convinced that he acted as a government agent, which led to the mysterious deaths of his key followers.
Marohombsar and his late relative, the notorious Abugado Bago, alias Commander Mubarak, were said to have raked in up to P100 million in ransom from the families of their victims, a big chunk of which went to their protectors in the police and military, sources in Central Mindanao’s political community said.
Sources from Malabang, Lanao del Sur, among them Muslim preachers, also said Marohombsar readily allocated some amount from the ransom his gang collected for the repair of mosques and to feed the poor in communities surrounding his hideouts.
"Kaya mahirap mahuli, dahil mga civilians na nakapalibot sa kanya ang mismong nagtatago sa kanya (It was difficult to catch him because civilians around him were the ones giving him refuge)," said his former follower identified only as Moctar, who now operates a small carinderia in Cotabato City.
But Marohombsar’s relatives said he provided police and military with vital information leading to the deaths of his followers in alleged shootouts, among them seven of his Maranaw hatchet men.
Marohombsar is half Maranaw, half Maguindanaon.
His mother is from Kabuntalan, an impoverished town in Maguindanao, while his father is pure Maranaw who belonged to the Marohombsar clan of Ganasi, a hinterland town in the second district of Lanao del Sur.
Among his peers, Marohombsar was known as a "witty and ambitious man" and who always looked forward to becoming "popular."
Marohombsar started his kidnapping activities in 1989, when he and a relative in Kabuntalan named Abugado Bago, aka Commander Mubarak, who belonged to the National Security Command of the Moro National Liberation Front, joined forces to form the so-called Mubarak kidnapping group.
It was Marohombsar who acted as the group’s strategist and plotted the abduction in Central Mindanao and surrounding regions of at least 46 people, mostly of Chinese descent, from 1990 to 1992.
The Mubarak group disbanded after Commander Mubarak was killed in a shootout with anti-kidnapping Marines in his hideout in then Davao del Norte’s Pantukan town, now under Compostela Valley province.
Marohombsar had worked as a security officer at the Mindanao State University in Marawi City. He was a close relative of the spouse of the former president of Mindanao’s biggest state-run university.
There are unconfirmed stories too of how Marohombsar allowed himself to be used by his relatives, who belong to Lanao del Sur’s political circle, to terrorize voters during previous elections.
One of his relatives in the second district of Lanao del Sur was even said to have given him a heavily customized caliber .45 automatic after the 1998 local elections for helping deliver much-needed votes that catapulted his kin to an elective post.