Kato's henchman falls

COTABATO CITY , Philippines  – Army and police agents arrested a notorious henchman of wanted Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) commander Ameril Ombra Kato during a raid on a residential area here Tuesday night.

Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said Kato’s cashiered subordinate, Camarudin Hadji Ali, alias Commander Mudi, was cornered by police and military agents at the house of his second wife along Pansacala street here with the help of Muslim villagers who informed authorities of his presence in the area.

Ali is a battalion commander of the MILF’s 105th Base Command led by Kato.

“We ought to thank the people in that area for helping us arrest this person,” Ponce told reporters.

Ali carried a P1.2-million bounty, police said.

Ali did not resist arrest when he sensed that operatives of the 6th ID’s anti-crime Task Force Tugis, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and the city police had surrounded the house of his second wife.

Ponce said Ali allowed himself to be handcuffed after he was shown a copy of a warrant for his arrest.

Police and Army intelligence officials said Ali was with Kato when MILF forces attacked farming villages in North Cotabato’s adjoining Aleosan and Midsayap towns, burned more than 500 houses there and executed several villagers after the aborted signing by government and MILF representatives of the controversial memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain in August last year.

The agreement, which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional, was the supposed basis for the setting up of a Moro territory in the South, which the MILF would have governed through its proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity.

“Now it’s up to this sub-commander of the (MILF’s) 105th Base Command to defend himself in court,” Ponce said, referring to Ali.

Kato, a foreign-trained Islamic missionary, carries a P10-million bounty, which the government raised to hasten his arrest in connection with his role in the plunder of dozens of farming villages in North Cotabato in August last year.