Evacuation site in Lanao Del Sur:nabbed by Maute member

A police officer holds a poster of wanted militants known as "Maute " group at a checkpoint set up at the entrance to Iligan City on Saturday, May 27, 2017 in Mindanao. Iligan city is one of the safe havens for the tens of thousands of Marawi residents who have fled their city following the rampage by Muslim militants.

The police arrested a member the Maute terror group in an evacuation site in Saguiran town in Lanao del Sur at past 5:00 p.m. Sunday.

Chief Superintendent Reuben Theodore Sindac, police director for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Lala Arafat, 38, was positively identified by evacuees as follower of siblings Omar and Abdullah Maute.

The Maute brothers are founders of the Dawlah Islamiya, or the Maute terror group, which operates in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Arafat, a resident of Barangay Osmeña, was arrested by policemen while mingling with internally-displaced people in a relief site in the town proper of Saguiaran.

Sindac said the Saguiran municipal police learned of the presence of Arafat in the evacuation site from vigilant evacuees aware of his link with the Dawlah Islamiya.

The policemen who frisked Arafat recovered from his possession 12 various identification cards bearing names of different people.

He was immediately brought to the Lanao del Sur provincial police in Marawi City for detention.

Sindac said probers will file rebellion charges against Arafat within the week.