Dolorfino’s party gave more than P400,000 as compensation for slain MNLF members, not as ransom money

By Ronron
February 5, 2007

The party of Maj. Gen. Mohhamad Ben Dolorfino and Undersecretary Ramon Santos gave the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) more than P400,000 to compensate for the lives of the nine MNLF rebels killed last January 18 in Sulu, and not in exchange for their freedom over the weekend.

The clarification came after the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) admitted that those killed were indeed MNLF members, as claimed by their leaders, and not Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) members as initially reported by the military.

Sulu Governor Benjamin Loong and AFP Western Mindanao Command chief Lt. Gen. Eugenio Cedo said Monday that in fact, Dolorfino and Santos already had that money when they went to the MNLF camp in Bitan-ag Complex in Panamao town last Friday morning.

“That was their primary mission in going there. All concerned agencies gave contributions to make the family (of the slain MNLF rebels) at peace,” Loong said in a phone interview.

Cedo said a huge chunk of the money came from the AFP, which allotted P30,000 for each of the nine concerned families. The rest came from the Office of the Presidential Assistant on the Peace Process (OPAPP) and the Sulu provincial government.

“Before they (Dolorfino’s party) went there, the families already agreed with the amount (of compensation due them),” Loong said.

Cedo admitted that indeed the slain rebels were mistaken to be ASG members because before the members of the Philippine Marines were deployed to the encounter site in Barangay Timpook, Patikul town, the information the military received was that armed ASG rebels were the ones present in the area.

The AFP initially maintained that the slain rebels were ASG bandits, and reiterated the same even if an MNLF official already claimed a few days later that they were MNLF members.

But, in today’s interview with Cedo, the official said the payment was in observance of an Islamic tradition to compensate for the lost life “just to appease the family,” and as part of the AFP’s “responsibility to correct the wrong it has done.”

“The money was to compensate the MNLF people who figured in the misencounter,” Cedo said.

Aside from killing nine rebels, the government troops also captured four others but released the three later. The military also suffered three fatalities in that January 18 encounter.

In separate interviews, however, AFP Public Information Officer Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarro and Philippine Marines spokesman Lt. Col. Ariel Caculitan maintained that the incident was a legitimate encounter, only that the government troops clashed with the wrong group as discovered later.

“The Armed Forces of the Philippines stands firm that it was a legitimate encounter in the sense that three Marines personnel also died actually… and that the information received was about the presence of ASG at that time,” Bacarro explained to reporters in Camp Aguinaldo.

Caculitan reiterated his earlier pronouncement that the rebels involved in that encounter were ASG members who were seeking membership with the MNLF following the death of top Abu Sayyaf leaders.

“The MNLF leadership should investigate if there are ASG members applying for membership with them. They should make sure that from the lowest level, their organization will not be infiltrated by the ASG,” Caculitan said.

“And if the MNLF has some movements, they should coordinate with the military commander in the area to avoid misencounters,” he added.

Dolorfino and Santos had said their primary purpose in going to the MNLF camp was to iron out the misencounter incident. But in the course of the meeting, the MNLF leadership brought up their demand for the resumption of the tripartite meeting of the MNLF, the government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP), and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to re-assess the implementation of the 1996 GRP-MNLF peace accord.

It was on this agendum that Dolorfino and company were asked to stay at the MNLF camp until the latter gets an assurance of the resumption of the tripartite meeting.

The group was only allowed to leave on Sunday afternoon./DMS