Mother of Maute founders wanted for possession of bombs

LANAO DEL SUR – Authorities will sue within the next two days the mother of the founders of the Maute terror group from whose house lawmen recovered bombs and firearms before dawn Wednesday.Soldiers, policemen and agents of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group found improvised explosive devices and unlicensed guns in the house of Farhana Maute in Marawi City in a raid aided by local officials.Farhana is the mother of siblings Abdullah and Omar Maute, founders of the Dawlah Islamiya, also known as the Maute terror group, now sowing havoc in the hinterland Butig town in the first district of Lanao del Sur.The group, boasting of its loyalty to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, has been using the ISIS flag as its revolutionary banner.Agents from the CIDG’s office in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and combined personnel of the Army’s 65thInfantry Battalion and the Lanao del Sur provincial police also found firearms in four other nearby houses owned by relatives of the two fanatical jihadists.Personnel of the 65th IB, backed with Simba combat vehicles, provided cover to the policemen and Army intelligence agents while conducting the search operation, which also resulted in the arrest of several occupants of the houses.Senior Supt. Agustin Tello, Lanao del Sur provincial police director, said investigators are now preparing the documents needed in the filing of criminal charges against the owners of the houses where the explosives and firearms were found.The raiding team that recovered the arms cache was armed with a warrant to search the houses of the Maute clan matriarch and five other relatives, Abdullah Romato Maute, Mohammad Kyayam Maute, Hamsah Romato Maute, Abdulazis Romato Maute and Mahathir Romato Maute.All of them remained at large, said to have fled prior to the November 25 to 26 incursions of Maute gunmen at the town proper of Butig, which sparked hostilities and caused the dislocation of more than 3,000 ethnic Maranaw families.The siblings Abdullah and Omar established the militant Dawlah Islamiya in 2015.The fanatical group has since been attacking hapless peasant enclaves in Butig, from whose residents they mulct protection money in the guise of zakat, which means alms in Arabic, to sustain its activities.Relatives said they both studied Islamic theology in Jordan and in Syria intermittently while employed as contract workers in the United Arab Emirates.Officials of the Police Regional Office-ARMM confirmed on Wednesday that criminal charges shall be filed against the owners of the houses where soldiers and policemen found guns and IEDs.A member of the police’s elite Special Action Force was injured when a booby trap went off while entering one of the houses subjected to search.