1 dead as cops try to arrest commander 'Lastikman'

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines -  A rogue Moro rebel was killed while a policeman was wounded in a firefight Tuesday in Pikit town triggered by an attempt to arrest a bandit implicated in more than 50  offenses, including deadly bombings, highway robberies, and large-scale drug trafficking.

Datukan Samad, also known as “Commander Lastikman,” who bolted  the  Maguindano provincial jail in Cotabato City about a year ago, fled while his followers traded shots with government forces that tried to surround their lair in Barangay Tinibtiban, a remote district in Pikit, to serve a warrant for his arrest.

Captain Tony Bulao, spokesman of the Army’s 602nd Brigade, identified Samad’s slain companion as Ramon Bantolinay, who died on the spot from multiple gunshot wounds.

A policeman, PO2 Christopher Soriano, was wounded in the ensuing encounter.

The raid at Samad’s hideout was jointly carried out by operatives of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, members of the Pikit municipal police, and combatants of the Army’s 5th Special Forces Battalion and the 7th Infantry Battalion.

Bulao said Samad and his men opened fire first at the approaching policemen and soldiers, provoking a running firefight.

The encounter stopped  only after the gunmen fled, leaving behind Bantolinay's cadaver, and several assault rifles.

The raiding team cornered Samad's wife in one of the houses nearby, according to Chief Inspector Elmer Guevara of North Cotabato's provincial CIDG office.

“She is helping us now locate the whereabouts of her husband,” Guevara said.

Samad has been enjoying the “patronage and protection” of Moro secessionist groups in North Cotabato, Guevara said.

Three people were killed, one of them a Red Cross volunteer, while more than a dozen others were wounded when some 50 Moro guerrillas tried to spring him from the Kidapawan City jail last year, where he was first detained following his arrest for illegal possession of firearms and explosives in 2011.

The rebels attempted to breach the gate of the Kidapawan City jail, but failed when guards engaged them in a firefight.

The attackers set off powerful improvised explosives and shot the buildings surrounding the jail with assault rifles as they fled.

Samad was transferred to the Maguindanao provincial jail in Cotabato City two months later, where he and 10 other detainees escaped in a jailbreak at dawn.

He was last reported to have returned to Pikit, his hometown, where he was coddled by a political warlord who allegedly used him to scare voters during the May 13 local polls and in last month's barangay elections.