Police capture Abu Sayyaf leader
ZAMBOANGA CITY: Security forces captured a notorious Abu Sayyaf subleader, whom police said was plotting terror attacks in the Zamboanga Peninsula in southern Philippines.
BGen. Jesus Cambay Jr., regional police chief, said Jamiul Nassalon was tracked down in his hideout in Caliran village in Zamboanga Sibugay’s Mabuhay town on Wednesday.
“Presently, Jamiul Nassalon is in the process of organizing his group intended for another terroristic activity within the Zamboanga Peninsula,” he added.
Cambay described the police operation that led to Nassalon’s capture as “high-risk and intelligence-driven” with at least six different land and sea units tapped to seize the terrorist.
“Jamiul Nassalon was arrested after a three-hour travel using high-speed sea craft, which surreptitiously entered the shorelines of Mabuhay municipality, taking advantage of the darkness of the night and, unknown to him, a police asset and members of the Barangay Intelligence Network had been monitoring his activities,” he said.
He bared that the 41-year-old Nassalon, who used various pseudonyms, was facing a string of criminal charges in connection to his bloody attacks against civilians in the region.
Nassalon was also implicated in the 2009 kidnapping of 71-year-old Doroteo Gonzales, a carpenter in Zamboanga City who was eventually beheaded in Basilan province after his family failed to pay the P25-million ransom in exchange for his life.
He was tagged as involved in the bombing of a provincial bus in Zamboanga City in 2012 that wounded at least six people, the killings of eight fishermen off Siromon Island in 2017and the strafing of a provincial in Buenavista village that injured at least eight passengers.
“His terrorist activities have caused death and injuries to a considerable number of persons and damaged substantial amounts of property,” Cambay said.
Nassalon’s capture came after Mayor Maria Isabelle Climaco-Salazar ordered the police and military to tighten security in Zamboanga City following the August 24 twin suicide bombings carried out by widows of slain Abu Sayyaf fighters in the capital town of Jolo in Sulu province. The attacks, claimed by the Islamic States, had killed over a dozen people and injured more than 20 civilians.