BIFF renegades launch more radical ISIS-style group

MAGUINDANAO --- Five radical clerics bolted from the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and tagged themselves genuine moassesseen” of the Mindanao counterpart of the Independent State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).The Arabic term moassesseen literally mean founders” in English and can also contextually imply as either progenitors or pioneers.Local officials in three towns in Maguindanao on Saturday confirmed the separation early this week of the five preachers and their followers from the BIFF during a gathering in the second district of the province.The radical group had also pledged allegiance to the Independent State of Iraq and Syria, whose black flag they now use as their revolutionary banner.The BIFF leadership distributed on Thursday a written press statement confirming that the five clerics, Salahudin Hassan, Abdulmalik Esmael, Bashir Ungab, Nasser Adil and Ansari Yunos, have left the group to form a breakaway faction focused on establishing an Asian Islamic caliphate allied with ISIS.Relatives said the five jihadists broke away from the BIFF after forging alliances with the Maute terror group in first district of Lanao del Sur and the more notorious Abu Sayyaf in Sulu.The Maute group is led by ethnic Maranaws Abdullah and Omar, both surnamed Maute.They both studied Islamic theology while employed as contract workers in the United Arab Emirates before they established their so-called black flag movement” in Lanao del Sur.Barangay folks said Salahudin and Esmael, both of Maguindanaon lineage, were trained by the slain Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, most known as Marwan, in fabrication and handling of improvised explosive devices in Mamasapano town southwest of Maguindanao.They are both from Shariff Saidona town in Maguindanao, according to local officials. They are no longer with BIFF and the BIFF has nothing to do with their activities now,” BIFF’s spokesman, Abu Misry Mama, said on Saturday.The BIFF earlier split into two factions, one led by Karialan and the other by Bongos, both Imams, but differed in their views on Islamic militancy and on how to relate with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which is helping the military restrain them from pulling off IED attacks in Central Mindanao.The government and the MILF are bound by a 1997 ceasefire accord to mutually cooperate in maintaining law and order in flashpoint areas in Mindanao. The BIFF was founded in late 2010 by Imam Ameril Ombra Kato, who started as commander of the MILF’s 105thBase Command.Kato bolted from the MILF in late 2010 due to irreconcilable differences with its central committee, whose figurehead, Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim, is keen on pursuing a negotiated peace deal with Malacañang.Kato died of a lingering illness in 2014 at Datu Saudi town in Maguindanao, after half of his body was paralyzed as a result of a hypertensive stroke two years before.Like the Abu Sayyaf, the BIFF also boasts of its loyalty to ISIS and incites people in areas where it operates to hate non-Muslims and treat them with animosity for being kuff’r, which means unbelievers.