10 rifles seized from Indonesian, Filipino companions
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COTABATO CITY — The police seized 10 assault rifles from an Indonesian and two Filipino companions intercepted Saturday, January 7, at a checkpoint in Kiamba town in Sarangani.
The Indonesian Anton Gobay, 29, and his Filipino companions, Michael Tino, 25, and the 53-year-old Jimmy Adolbe, are now clamped down in a detention facility of the Kiamba Municipal Police Station.
Brig Gen. Jamili Macaraeg, director of the Police Regional Office-12, said Sunday the suspects were immediately detained when policemen at a security roadblock in Barangay Nalus in Kiamba found 10 AR-15 assault rifles in the tricycle they were riding together, en route to somewhere in the municipality.
Combined personnel of PRO-12’s 1204th Mobile Company and the Kiamba municipal police force were about to let the three men get through the roadblock but held them instead when they noticed a box at the rear of the tricycle and, as they inspected, found 10 firearms inside.
Macaraeg said PRO-12 shall report to the Indonesian Embassy the arrest of Gobay, who is now undergoing tactical interrogation.
Intelligence agents in the Sarangani Provincial Police Office and PRO-12 are now trying to determine if he has links with three allied terrorist groups in central Mindanao, the Al-Khobar, the Dawlah Islamiya, and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).
More than 30 members of the three groups have surrendered in batches to units of PRO-12 in the past 12 months, among them experts in the fabrication of improvised explosive devices. (John Unson)
