A “rogue" Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) commander has sent a four-member delegation to a breakaway leader to urge him to rejoin the secessionist group.
Bravo Macaapar, one of the three MILF commanders declared “rogues" by the government, urged Umbra Kato to return to the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF), according to an article in the MILF website.
“Dubbed ‘Bravo Initiative Unity Team,’ the delegation did not have the official approval of the MILF Central Committee, but it allowed it anyway ‘to exhaust all efforts to make Kato and his group to realize their shortcomings and return to the fold of the [BIAF],’" the MILF said.
The MILF said the team, headed by one Khalid Al-Haj, met Kato and some of his lieutenants last April 20 somewhere in the mountains of Maguindanao.
In its summary report dated April 22, 2011, the team had relayed four messages to Kato, two of which were:
That the mission is not only a visitation of comrades in the front but as real brothers in Jihad; and
To understand the real problem of the relationship between Ustaj Ameril Omra Kato and the leadership.
“None of these has been committed by the Murad-led MILF," the article quoted an aide of the team as saying.
Kato and Bravo, along with Alim Ali Pangalian, had been tagged in bloody skirmishes in North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte in 2008.
The three led attacks after the Supreme Court junked a Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) between the government and the MILF.
Both Kato and Bravo carried P10-million rewards on their heads, while Pangalian has a P5-million reward for his arrest.
In 2009, the government and MILF peace panels had tasked the International Monitoring Team (IMT) to investigate the fighting in North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte to determine whether the three MILF commanders were guilty of the allegations against them.
Both the government and MILF have contending and opposing accounts of the fighting, the MILF said. - KBK,
