MILF OKs IMT probe on ‘rogue’ commanders

The International Monitoring Team (IMT) overseeing a ceasefire between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will investigate the three rebel leaders who led a series of attacks in Central Mindanao last year. The MILF said the negotiating panels of the two parties had agreed to let the IMT investigate Abdullah “Bravo" Macapaar, Ameril Ombra Kato, and Solaiman Pangalian. “The decision was arrived at by the parties during their deliberation of the IMT Terms of Reference (TOR) on December 9, in which they also agreed to send back the IMT after the martial rule in Maguindanao is lifted by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo," the MILF said on its Web site Sunday. The government and the MILF last December 8 resumed their long-stalled peace negotiations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Bravo, Kato and Pangalian - currently the subject of manhunt operations by the military in Central Mindanao - led fighting in Lanao del Norte and North Cotabato on August 2008 after the Supreme Court junked the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), a principal MILF demand in the peace negotiations. The government and the MILF had also agreed to let the IMT look into alleged violations by the military in counter-offensives in Maguindanao and nearby provinces. Such violations allegedly triggered the massive evacuation of civilians, the total of which numbered more than 700,000 during its peak. In Maguindanao alone, more than 300,000 fled their homes. “Today, some 300,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) or evacuees are still in evacuation centers, who refused to go back to their homes for lack of houses, besides being fearful of renewed fighting in Mindanao," the MILF said. Both the government and MILF also decided to give new mandate to the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group (AHJAG), which is tasked “to interdict and isolate kidnap-for-ransom group and other similar criminal syndicates operating in or near MILF areas." - KBK, GMANews.TV