Task force to probe sultan’s gunslaying

SULTAN KUDARAT, Maguindanao — The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police activated Task Force Sultan yesterday to investigate last Wednesday’s gunslaying of the 25th sultan of Maguindanao.

The ARMM police, meanwhile, branded as "wild speculation" a report (not by The STAR) insinuating that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) might have something to do with the killing of Sultan Amir Baraguir here.

Senior Superintendent Akmad Mamalinta, ARMM police director, said insinuations on who could have masterminded the killing of the 46-year-old Baraguir could only sow more "confusion" among his grieving relatives.

Mamalinta said influential elders of the Baraguir clan have assured the ARMM police that they would persuade all their relatives to allow the Task Force Sultan to go after the culprits.

Mamalinta said Philippine National Police chief Director General Arturo Lumibao and Interior and Local Government Secretary Angelo Reyes have directed the ARMM police to update them on the task force’s findings.

Baraguir had just alighted from a car near his frontyard when a man armed with a caliber .45 automatic approached and shot him several times in the head.

The attacker also shot and wounded Baraguir’s younger sibling, Datu Andih.

Mamalinta said he himself was surprised about how the MILF could become a suspect in Baraguir’s killing.

The report said MILF guerrillas might have carried out the murder due to Baraguir’s supposed opposition to the creation of a Muslim state in Mindanao and for his advocacy for the so-called "decolonization" of Maguindanao and Sulu, where sultanates had existed for hundreds of years before the Spanish colonizers arrived in the 16th century.

The MILF denied having a hand in Baraguir’s murder.