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BY PRINCE GOLEZ
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Thursday, June 8, 2017
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This image taken from an undated video shows the purported leader of the Islamic State group Southeast Asia branch, Isnilon Hapilon (center), in a meeting of militants at an undisclosed location. AP
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MANILA – Senators have learned about the video showing the Maute group planning the assault in Marawi City from a security briefing during an executive caucus, according to Sen. Panfilo Lacson.
In fact, the video was what made Lacson decide to support the proclamation of martial law in Mindanao, the senator said in a statement.
Obtained exclusively by the Associated Press (AP), the video showed Maute leaders along with the purported leader of the Islamic State’s Southeast Asia branch, Isnilon Hapilon, in a secret meeting, planning the attack in Marawi.
“Since the Armed Forces of the Philippines has already declassified the confiscated video showing how Maute planned the Marawi City rebellion, I think I can now disclose that this video footage, among other disclosures in the security briefing made by top security officials of the Duterte administration during our executive caucus, is what made me decide to vote in favor of the martial law proclamation in Mindanao,” Lacson said.
Lacson was one of the 17 who voted to pass Senate Resolution No. 388, which expressed support to President Rodrigo Duterte’s proclamation of martial law and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in Mindanao on May 23.
“Further, I conclude that our colleagues who still oppose the martial law proclamation either did not understand the gravity of the security threat posed by the rebellion in the south or they are simply opposed to anything that President Duterte does or acts on,” said Lacson, a former Philippine National Police chief.
Franklin Drilon, Risa Hontiveros, Francis Pangilinan, Paolo Benigno Aquino, and Antonio Trillanes IV voted against the Senate resolution.
Government troops discovered the video on a cellphone they seized during a May 23 raid on a safe house where Hapilon and other militants were believed to be hiding, the AP reported.
A separate screen grab of the same meeting, which the American newswire said it obtained from an antiterrorism agent, showed the militants writing on a calendar dated 2017.
The AP said an Army official allowed it to record the video as it played on a laptop computer.
Hapilon was in the United States’ list of most-wanted terrorists and had a $5 million bounty on his head, the newswire reported.
Also shown in the video plotting the Marawi attack were Abdullah Maute, two of his brothers — Omarkhayam and Maddi — and another militant known as Abu Humam, a member of another militant group linked to a 2013 bombing in Cagayan de Oro, the AP said.
Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff General Eduardo Año confirmed the identities of those present in the video, including Hapilon.
Año said the images showed that the Maute group “has this intention of not only rebellion but actually dismembering a portion of the Philippine territory by occupying the whole of Marawi city and establishing their own Islamic state or government.”
According to Año, the reality that “a full-blown rebellion” is underway should convince skeptics that this is not just “a small problem,” the AP reported./PN
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