COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Personnel of the police’s Highway Patrol Group (HPG) foiled Friday an attempt by two men to smuggle into the city a .50 caliber machine gun.
The duo, relatives Mohaddin Sabal Monico, 35, and the 28-year-old Alidatu Abdul Monico, are now clamped down in a detention facility here of the Cotabato City police.
Members of the HPG-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region first flagged them down near the Delta Bridge at the border of Cotabato City and Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao only to ask them why their car is bereft of license plates.
HPG-BAR personnel saw the machinegun inside the vehicle of the Monicos that they inspected when they noticed that both turned jittery when they started asking questions about the vehicle’s registration documents and their identities.
Police Lt. Col. Joy Andrade, regional chief of HPG-BAR, said Saturday members of the team that intercepted the Monicos also seized from them an unlicensed .45 caliber pistol found inside their car.
The suspects were immediately booked and turned over by the HPG-BAR to the Cotabato City Police office for prosecution.
Police Brig. Gen. Eden Ugale, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said Saturday their intelligence operatives are now verifying the possible links of the suspects to terror groups belonging to the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, or BIFF.
The BIFF, operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is tagged in all deadly bombings in central Mindanao since 2014.
Three men were intercepted by soldiers and policemen only about two months ago in Shariff Saidona Mustapha, Maguindanao while on their way to deliver somewhere in the municipality 6,000 rounds of ammunition for M16 assault rifles.