COTABATO CITY — Twelve more Abu Sayyaf members surrendered in Basilan on Wednesday, barely four days after soldiers and policemen killed their leader in a clash in the territorial seas of the province.
Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, and Lt. Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, separately confirmed to reporters the surrender of the 12 terrorists, who also turned in assault rifles, grenade launchers, improvised explosive devices and components for home-made bombs.
Nobleza said the 12 terrorists, mostly adolescents, agreed to return to the fold of law through the intercession of officials of the 101st Infantry Brigade under Brig. Gen. Alvin Luzon and local executives, among them Basilan Gov. Hadjiman Salliman.
Brawner said the 12 Abu Sayyaf members renounced their membership with the Abu Sayyaf during a surrender rite in Isabela City on Thursday, in the presence of Army Major Gen. Ignatius Patrimonio, commander of the anti-terror Joint Task Orion covering Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
“Besides the 101st Infantry Brigade and the Basilan Provincial Police Office, we also ought to thank the mayors in Basilan and their provincial governor for their continuing efforts to entice the remaining members of this group to come out and live peacefully in their hometowns in the province,” Brawner said.
More than 400 Abu Sayyaf members in Basilan had surrendered in batches since 2016 through the joint backdoor initiatives of the 101st Infantry Brigade, the Basilan Provincial Police Office, the Basilan mayors league and the administration of Salliman.
The surrender of the 12 Abu Sayyaf members, who had pledged allegiance to the government, came after a joint military-police maritime group killed last Saturday the top leader in Basilan and Sulu of the Abu Sayyaf, Mudzrimar Sawadjaan, a Tausug, in an offshore encounter at the boundary of the territorial seas of Tipo-Tipo and Tuburan towns in the Basilan.
Wanted for 19 criminal cases in different courts, Sawadjaan, an expert in fabrication of improvised explosive devices, was tagged in all deadly bomb attacks in Sulu in the past ten years, including the Jan. 27, 2019 bombing of the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral in the downtown in the provincial capital Jolo that left 20 churchgoers dead and injured 97 others.
Three of the 12 Abu Sayyaf members who surrendered on Wednesday, who asked to be identified only as Karim, Saratul and Jipanul, said they feared for their lives when they learned about Sawadjaan’s death in the hands of pursuing police and military operatives.
“If that can happen to a senior leader of the group that we have bolted from, how much more for us? We will help convince our companions still out there to surrender and start life all over again,” the 19-year-old Jipanul, who is of mixed Tausug and Yakan descent, said in Filipino.