Couple detained for supplying arms to Mindanao terrorists
Police announced the arrest of a couple suspected of supplying high-powered firearms and ammunition allegedly pilfered from the military to Mindanao terror groups like the Daesh-linked Abu Sayyaf as well as gun-for-hire groups and politicians determined to maintain their “private armies.”
Director General Oscar Albayalde, the chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), identified the suspects as Edgardo Medel, 46, and his wife Rosamarie, 34, who were arrested in an entrapment operation at a service station along the North Luzon Expressway.
Albayalde said the Medels were arrested after they turned over powerful weapons like submachineguns and ammunition worth $24,000 to a policeman posing as a buyer for a gun-for-hire syndicate as well as politicians running in the coming May 2019 midterm election.
What surprised the arresting officers, Albayalde disclosed, was that the more than 12,000 rounds of assorted ammunition were still contained in crates bearing serial numbers and the sign, “Property of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.”
With this information, Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana ordered a thorough and immediate investigation of the case as he pointed out: “We’ll investigate how these ammo ended up in the wrong hands.”
Albayalde agreed, saying: “I just cannot imagine the death and destruction that will result should these war materiel fall into the hands of the New People’s Army (NPA) as well as the Daesh-linked Abu Sayyaf terror group.”
Investigators said they were zeroing in on a retired Philippine army soldier who has been supplying the couple with smuggled weapons in the past two years for sale to terror groups in Mindanao as well as guns-for-hire, the NPA and unscrupulous politicians running in the May 2019 election, according to Albayalde.
The soldier, he said, used to be based while still on active duty at the military camp called Fort Magsaysay, the home of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division, in Nueva Ecija province in Central Luzon where the arrested couple are also residing.
The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines that has been waging a Maoist-style insurgency against the government for 50 years, considered the longest in Asia and the Pacific. On the other hand, the military linked the Abu Sayyaf and the Maute Group that both pledged allegiance to the Daesh extremists in the Middle East for the siege on Marawi City in May 2017 that prompted President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte to declare martial law over the whole of troubled Mindanao.
Source: Gulf Today
