North Cotabato bomber captured

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - Policemen finally caught on Tuesday the elusive bomber behind the November 2014 attack in Kabacan town that killed a student and injured 18 others.

The suspect, 49-year-old Gardo Usop, was cornered by personnel of the Kabacan municipal police at Barangay Kayaga after almost two years of surveillance.

Senior Inspector Ronnie Cordero, municipal police chief, said they learned of his presence in Barangay Kayaga in northwest of the municipality from community elders on Tuesday morning and immediately carried out the operation that led to his arrest.

Usop, an ethnic Maguindanao, was tagged as responsible for the bombing of a busy spot in Kabacan in November 2014 that resulted in the death of Monique Mantawil, a student of the state-run University of Southern Mindanao in the same town.

The blast injured 18 people, among them children, who sustained shrapnel wounds in different parts of their bodies.

Witnesses had testified having seen Usop leave the bomb-laden package at the spot where the improvised explosive device went off.

The IED was fashioned from a mortar round rigged with a blasting mechanism attached to a mobile phone.

A cohort of Usop named Badrudin Abid was arrested by policemen 10 days after the bombing.

Cordero said Usop voluntarily turned himself in to the police agents who raided his hideout when they showed him a warrant for his arrest issued by Judge Alandrex Betoya of central Mindanao’s Regional Trial Court Branch 16.