ZAMBOANGA CITY, 7 January 2005 — The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) yesterday disowned a self-styled US-based Filipino Muslim who claims to be a senior member of the Philippines’ largest separatist rebel group.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said his group has already warned the Filipino government that Saeed A. Daof, who claimed to be the MILF’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and chairman of the group’s Economic and Development Committee, is a fraud.
“This Saeed A. Daof, who goes around and tells everybody that he is what he claims to be, is not a member of the MILF or any of its units whatsoever. He does not have the authority to use the name of the MILF or anything associated with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front,” Kabalu told Arab News.
Kabalu admitted that Daof met with then MILF chieftain Salamat Hashim in Camp Abubaker as-Siddique headquarters in Maguindanao province in the southern Philippines in 2000 and offered to help the separatist rebels get support from Muslim countries.
But, Kabalu said, the MILF rejected Daof’s offer. “Daof or whatever he offered was flatly rejected by the MILF for some reasons,” he said without elaborating further.
Kabalu did not say whether Daof had asked or received financial supports for the MILF from foreign governments.
But Shariff Julabbi, who also used to be reported in media as MILF chairman and spokesman for Western Mindanao until he was disowned by the group, disputed Kabalu’s statement. He said squabbles among senior rebel leaders fragmented the group after Hashim’s death in August 2003.
Daof resigned as MILF’s ambassador and chairman of the group’s Economic and Development Committee, but now runs the Center for the Promotion of Peace in Mindanao (CPPM), a non-governmental organization based in Manila, which advocates peace in the strife-torn region.
“Brother Saeed A. Daof is a good man, a well-respected community leader, who promotes peace in the southern Philippines. He resigned from the MILF because it has already lost its glory and credibility as a revolutionary organization,” Julabbi said in a separate interview.
Julabbi also severed his ties with the MILF after Hashim’s death and is now the chieftain of a group called the Bangasamoro Mujahideen Islamic Liberation Front (BMILF), which advocates an independent Islamic state in the southern Philippines.
6 Die in Ambush
Also in the southern Philippines, six people — including a six-year old girl — were killed when gunmen ambushed them on a remote village in North Cotabato province, officials said yesterday.
Two others survived the attack late Wednesday in the village of Bao in Alamada town. Town mayor Ernesto Concepcion tagged members of the army-led paramilitary group as behind the ambush and that robbery was likely the motive of the attack.
“Those behind the ambush were paramilitary men. They also took all the money of the victims,” the official told the radio network DZRH yesterday.
The victims were on their way home to Midsayap town after selling corn in Alamada, reports said.
Regional army spokesman Lt. Col. Franklin del Prado said they were investigating the mayor’s allegations.
The military identified those killed as Marcelo Erosido, 60; his wife Juliana, 55; Hernani Quinot, 25; Jieselle Quinot, 6; Freddie Quinot and Carlos Aldamar, whose ages were not immediately known. Two women who survived the ambush were identified as Susana Libon and Melissa Butalid.
