Army officer faces charges for Marawi ‘looting’

From the Gulf News (Nov 1): Army officer faces charges for Marawi ‘looting’

A Philippine Army officer and five enlisted men are facing charges for alleged looting in what appeared to be the first hint of scandal involving the military to rid Marawi City of Daesh-linked terrorists.

GMA News, quoting military sources, however, failed to identify the Army officer and the five soldiers allegedly involved in the looting and how they were caught.

But earlier, the military announced it was enforcing an order for the strict inspection of the pieces of luggage by soldiers allowed to return home after the Marawi siege was declared over.

Also on Tuesday, the military reported that soldiers killed a Maute Group terrorist “straggler,” armed with an M15 rifle at the main battle zone in Marawi.

The killing occurred more than a week after the military officially announced it was terminating its combat operations on Oct.23, or exactly five months after the terrorists who pledged allegiance to the Daesh extremists laid siege on the city on May 23.

The siege prompted President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte to cut short his state visit to Russia while imposing martial law over the whole of troubled Mindanao which Congress has extended until Dec.30 this year.

Security experts acknowledged the death of two of the terrorist leaders helped hasten to end the siege that devastated the city, killed close to 2,000 people most of them terrorists and forced at least 400,000 residents to leave their homes.

One of those killed was Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of the Abu Sayyaf, named by the Daesh leaders to be its “emir” with orders to set up a caliphate in Marawi City and make it their main base of operation in Southeast Asia.

The other was Omar Maute who with his brother Abdullah founded the terror group named after them following their return to the Philippines from their studies in Egypt where the imbibed the Daesh teachings, according to the military.

But despite Marawi’s liberation, Duterte and other officials agreed that the threat posed by the terrorists remained.

Lieutenant General Carlito Galvez, the chief of the military’s Western Mindanao Command, disclosed that Duterte ordered them to finish off the remnants of the Abu Sayyaf and the Maute Group by December.

According to Galvez, his command would redeploy the forces in Maguindanao, Sulu and Basilan to sustain its operations against the remaining terrorist cells.

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