COTABATO CITY, 30 August — Reports linking alleged Pentagon kidnap gang leader Tahir Alonto to a top official of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is nonsense, the separatist group’s spokesman said yesterday.
Spokesman Eid Kabalu categorically denied that Alonto and Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim, the MILF’s vice chairman for military affairs, were related. “The two certainly have no relationship whatsoever, either by consanguinity or affinity,” he said.
Kabalu said the persistent accusation was “simply a diversionary tactic intended to mislead the public.”
News reports linking Alonto with Murad have been revived after the killing of Pentagon member Faisal Marohombsar in a shootout with police and soldiers early this week in Magallanes town of Cavite, south of Manila.
Marohombsar, who escaped from jail at Camp Crame, the Philippine National Police’s main headquarters in Quezon City, weeks ago, was holding two kidnap victims when he was shot dead.
According to Chief Superintendent Eduardo Matillano, the former head of the PNP Regional Command in Davao, he had made a report establishing links between police Superintendents Willie Dangane and one Alquizar with Marohombsar and his cohorts. Matillano was quoted as saying on Tuesday that Dangane and Alquizar were investigated but later cleared and given promotion for reasons he didn’t understand.
He said Alonto also used to be the fund-raiser of the MILF through his kidnap-for-ransom activies.
Spokesman Kabalu advised the military and police to keep their problems with Marohombsar, Alonto and their cohorts among themselves because the MILF has nothing to do with them all.
Kabalu said Matillano’s own report shows that it is the police, not the MILF, who have links with the kidnap gang.
Marohombsar’s death has drawn a lot of speculations, particularly, from the political opposition, whom suspect that the incident was a case of “rubout.”
Marohombsar’s relatives and lawyer also claimed that the suspected kidnap gang leader was scheduled to surrender when he was killed.
