ZAMBOANGA CITY, 20 November 2004 — Police filed murder charges against two suspected Abu Sayyaf rebels who were implicated in the killing of a photojournalist in the southern island of Jolo, officials said yesterday.
Jolo police chief Supt. Anuddin Jalad said they have charged Omar Sailani and his brother Itting in the killing of Gene Boyd Lumawag of the domestic news agency MindaNews. Both are still at-large, he said.
“We have filed charges against two Abu Sayyaf suspects Omar and Itting Sailani for the killing of Lumawag,” Jalad told Arab News by phone from Jolo. He did not elaborate, saying only that the duo were known contract killers.
Jalad said the brothers were both natives of nearby Basilan Island who fled to Jolo to escape military operations. It was not immediately known if Itting Sailani was the same Abu Sayyaf rebel who surrendered to the military in Basilan in April 2002.
Lumawag was shot in the head in downtown Jolo on Nov. 13 while working on an anti-corruption story, police said.
Military records said Sailani was part of an Abu Sayyaf unit who held US missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham, abducted along Californian man Guillermo Sobero and 17 other Filipino holidaymakers in the western province of Palawan in May 2001.
Investigators say Lumawag may have been killed because of the story MindaNews was working on or that he was mistaken as a government spy by the Abu Sayyaf, which had killed journalists Rey Bancairin and Candelario Cayona in Zamboanga City the past years.
The commander of the anti-terrorist Joint Task Force Comet, Brig. Gen. Agustin Dema-ala said witnesses have surfaced last week and have identified one suspect.
“We have witnesses who surfaced and identified the killer as a member of the Abu Sayyaf’s urban terrorist group,” Dema-ala said.
Lumawag was with his editor Carolyn Arguillas in Jolo island, but alone when he was attacked after taking photographs of sunset at a pier. Both were based in Davao City in Mindanao region.
Lumawag was the 9th journalist slain in the country this year.
