Police gun down `Maguindanao Massacre’ suspect
Mindanao Armed Conflict • 20:30 PM Thu Apr 21, 2022
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By:
John M. Unson
COTABATO CITY - Personnel of the police’s elite Special Action Force shot dead a recalcitrant suspect in the Nov. 23, 2009 Maguindanao Massacre they were to peacefully arrest here on Thursday morning.
Surin Mentang fired a gun at the SAF team and soldiers from the Army’s 40th Infantry Battalion approaching his hideout in Sitio Itil in Barangay Satan, Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao to serve him an arrest warrant, provoking a gunfight that resulted in his death.
Col. Jibin Bongcayao, Maguindanao police director, said personnel of the provincial police and the operatives of the 41st Special Action Force, led by Captain Jovanie Julian, were forced to neutralize Mentang without hesitation when he pulled out a gun and opened fire.
Bongcayao said Mentang was declared dead on arrival at the Maguindanao Provincial Hospital, some three kilometers from Barangay Satan.
A villager was wounded in the ensuing crossfire.
More than 50 suspects in the Maguindanao Massacre, the country’s worst election-related violence ever, remain at large.
More than 50 people, 38 of them members of the media in central Mindanao, perished in the incident.