Maute group possibly drew foreign funders, sources say

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. LANAO DEL SUR, Philippines — The Dawlah Islamiya possibly attracted the attention of potential funders abroad with its deadly incursion into Marawi City, but lost in its bid to rally Maranaos to its militant cause, sources said Saturday. Security officials are also certain that the group, comprised of Maute and Abu Sayyaf gunmen, has no more safe haven in Lanao del Sur province due to public indignation spawned by its destructive foray into the city. Talks have been spreading around since Friday in central Mindanao purporting that leaders of big Maranao clans in Marawi City and in the 39 towns of Lanao del Sur are now converging against siblings Omar and Abdullah Maute, founders of the Dawlah Islamiya. They want these two members of the Maute clan dead and they might even resort to attacking their relatives just to get even with what they have done to Marawi,” said an ethnic Maranaw mayor in the first district of Lanao del Sur. Lt. Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr. of the Western Mindanao Command said on Saturday that he received reports from local officials about the brewing tension between indignant Maranaos and the Maute family. “I am appealing to victims of the Marawi conflict to remain sober and to refrain from putting the law into their hands. We have duly constituted authorities there to deal with them. All we need is public cooperation in building criminal cases against the culprits and voluntary assistance in tracking them down,” Galvez said. The Dawlah Islamiya originally started only as the small jihadist “Ghuraba” bloc that the military conveniently named Maute terror group based on the surname of Omar and Abdullah. A vice mayor, whose town is not too distant from Butig, the hometown of the Maute family, said it is the administration of former President Benigno Aquino III that should be blamed for the rise of the Dawlah Islamiya. “Authorities under President Aquino did not act on our reports about the gradual emergence then of a small group of Islamic militants bragging about their connections with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. It was in late 2014 that we started reporting this group to them,” the source said. Members of the Lanao del Sur league of mayors said even while the Dawlah Islamiya was still a fledgling group, siblings Omar and Abdullah already showed residents in Marawi City and in villages in Butig and nearby towns how ruthless they can be to police and military collaborators. Dawlah Islamiya gunmen killed in an ambush in Marawi City in September 2016 Inspector Darangina Ditucalan, chief of the Poona Bayabao municipal police, just as he was to start prosecuting a scion of a local clan identified with the group for a criminal offense. Three ambulant fish vendors, two of them Maranaos, were also shot dead later in different towns near Butig on mere suspicion they were spying on the Maute brothers for the military. Militants were also tagged as behind the ambush of a convoy of soldiers near the campus of the Mindanao State University in Marawi City in 2015 to avenge the deaths of companions in initial crackdowns by units of the Army’s 103rd Brigade. Three soldiers were killed in the attack, pulled off in broad daylight. “They also had more than 20 other deadly gun attacks in Marawi City and nearby towns from 2014 to 2016. Some of the victims were military intelligence agents,” a local official said. Internally-displaced Maranaos now languishing in squalid evacuation sites have harsh words against the Dawlah Islamiya whenever reporters ask them to say something about the group’s religious adventurism that caused their dislocation. An evacuee, Samir Kansain, 32, said he will not hesitate to kill any immediate relative of Omar and Abdullah if he can have the chance. “What they did to Marawi that resulted to our relocation to an evacuation site is something we cannot accept,” he said in Filipino, in Maranao accent. Fatima Madudi, a mother of two, said she rejoiced when she learned of the recent arrests, one after another, of spouses Cayamora and Farhana, parents of Omar and Abdullah, now both detained in police facilities. “We wish all of them will be arrested soon or be killed by soldiers running after them,” Madudi, also a Maranao, said in Cebuano dialect. Chief Superintendent Reuben Theodore Sindac, police director for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, on Saturday said he has directed all of the 39 municipal police chiefs in Lanao del Sur to guard against possible retaliations by angry Maranaos against Maute clan members within their reach. Sindac also confirmed receiving reports on the now mounting animosity of evacuees to the family of Cayamora and Farhana and their relatives in Lanao del Sur’s Marantao and Butig towns. Cayamora is from Marantao, the town nearest to Marawi City via the Secretary Narciso Ramos Highway. “We don’t want any outbreak of violence between angry Maranao people and this family. We have to let law take its proper course. Authorities are doing everything for justice to triumph,” Sindac said.