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MILF: We don’t have the bomber By MANUEL T. CAYON DAVAO CITY - The Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF) denied it has the bomber of the Davao airport in its
stable, but warned this city’s mayor that saboteurs may be responsible in
pinning the MILF as a foreign terrorist organization to sever “the good
relations we have with the city government.” "That’s quite impossible
because wala naman sa amin ang bomber,” said Mohammad al-Haj Murad
Ebrahim, MILF vice chairman for military affairs. Murad said that the alleged bomber
was not their member “so how can we surrender na wala naman sa amin?” “If there is coordination [that
would be agreed], we are willing to cooperate in the investigation,” he said
in an interview with dxdc-Radyo Agong here Tuesday. He said that “ever since, we have
always made our commitment that we are willing to cooperate to investigate.
We are willing to do so to determine who are really responsible. "We have very high regard for
the mayor and we have good relations with him,” he said, but he suggested
that Duterte “should consider that this might be a sabotage
to our relations.” What the MILF asked, he said, was
for Duterte “to conduct a deeper investigation to determine who did it
[bombing] and not to blame us outright for the incident.” He said that it was
an unlikely accusation leveled against the group, saying that there was no
deep investigation yet “and barely five hours, or several hours later, they have blamed us.” Only recently, he said, “we have a
continuing dialogue with him [Duterte] and some of our officers have direct
dialogue with him.”He said that “even I was writing him some notes.” In those notes, Murad said he gave
assurances to Duterte “that we have no intention to disturb the peace and
tranquility of the city. We have not really talked
personally, but he sent an emissary and I handed him a note. That was late
last year. That was the last [time] we wrote.” Duterte has earlier bewailed the
silence of the MILF when he sought them out, including MILF chairman, Hashim
Salamat, two weeks before the bombing outside the Duterte appeared to have relied on
testimonies from witnesses pointing to one of the fatalities as the one who
planted the bomb. The military has claimed that the
bomber was an MILF member. The city government has since
pressed charges against Salamat, Murad and other top-ranking leaders of the
MILF. However, Duterte, in his regular
Sunday television program, admitted that he has no enough evidence to link
the MILF to the bombing. He said he would exert all efforts to unearth
evidence that would link the group to it. But Murad said that with the
charges against them, “we are not free anymore to cooperate to investigate
this.” Murad also said that the MILF was
saddened with the charges. “It’s sad because this is a sign that it is
difficult to resume the peace talks.” |
