The military will not stop its offensive against ground commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) who launched attacks in several provinces in Mindanao this week, a high ranking government official said Wednesday.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said MILF forces led by Abdurahman Macapaar alias Commander Bravo and Commander Ameril Umbra Kato committed atrocities in the provinces of Lanao del Norte, Saranggani and North Cotabato and should be tried in court.
“The point is these men have committed criminal activities under the Revised Penal Code of the Republic of the Philippines. Criminal justice proceedings are being pursued against them. They are being pursued and they must be tried in accordance with our criminal justice system. And this is the intent of our operations,” he said in an ABS-CBN News Channel interview.
He said the government is now in the process of collating pieces of evidence against Kato and Bravo.
Teodoro was reacting to MILF chairman Al Haj Murad Ebrahim’s call to cease military offensive against the Moro rebels to avoid retaliation. Murad said arresting Bravo and Kato will not help in ending the hostilities in the south.
Murad said the attacks by Moro rebels were the result of "frustration of MILF ground commanders" with the aborted signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) scheduled earlier this month.
He said the aborted signing of the MOA-AD and inflammatory statements "built up the outrage" of MILF ground commanders. "There were so many delays in the negotiations. There have been actuations by the GRP that they were trying to renege on what had been agreed on already," he said.
Teodoro said Murad's statement that the MILF leadership still has control over its commanders, particularly Kato and Bravo, “is a very telling admission. He said the atrocities committed by the MILF ground commanders could not be justified.
“I think they have to study that statement and we will have to study the extent of the influence of the MILF as to these people when they did the rampage that they did,” he said.
He maintained that, whether or not the MILF leadership will punish Kato and Bravo, the government will still exert all efforts to bring them to justice.