Chapter III
CHAPTER 3
1989
The cause for their Mindanao trip: a very high ranking official ordered them to make an offer of a huge sum to be paid each month to a retired professor from the biggest academic institution in Marawi City, the Mindanao State University (MSU). Prof. Mahour Badir Al-Julabi was approached at the lobby of the MSU.
“Sir, we were sent by Cimarron. He said we will find you here in Marawi City.”
The Professor looked up at the two large young men and nodded. “I see. How is the boss?”
“He is fine Prof.” Then the two visitors remembered they still have to introduce themselves. “Sir, I am Aguilar and my companion here, Richard would like to have a word with you.”
“Atty. Gloria, Sir. You can call me Ricky.”
“So what brings you here to the Holy City of Marawi?” The Professor took the extended hand of the second prospector.
The man, who called himself Atty. Gloria, nervously licked his lips and plucked a small tickler pad from his pocket, making motions of browsing through its pages. He was about to speak when the Professor said, “I will be candid with you Richard. Ricky, isn’t it?”
Atty. Richard Gloria said, “Yes, Sir. Correct, Sir.”
“You don’t look like an attorney to me? Please go straight to the point. I don’t care what your name is. Do you have something for me from Cimarron?”
The first man fished for something inside the pouch bag that was strapped on his shoulder and gave it to the Professor. The man who said he was Atty. Gloria gaped at the old man. He seemed to realize from the old man's words that Cimarron would not have entrusted such a delicate message verbally. So this must be a very trusted old fart, he thought to himself.
Prof. Al Julabi opened the sealed envelope and read:
November 29, 1989
Dear Juls,
I hope you’re fine when there when you get this note. I have a little proposal that I wish you would like. For P2-M a month budget, I want you organize and lead a new Islamic movement in Mindanao to help government bring down the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MNLF and MILF). They will be given exposure in Pakistan, Afghanistan and later everywhere that you have contacts in. You will report only to me and no one else. This will be entered as a strategic project. In any case please relay the answer to my men. Please destroy this note.
Cimarron
Prof. Al Julabi placed the letter in the envelope and gently closed it. For a few seconds, he closed his eyes as if in prayer. The he placed the envelope inside his leather bag and turned his gaze to the two men who were animatedly having a conversation about the lovely girls in Zamboanga as soon as their business in Marawi is over.
The good professor thought about the scheme. He predicted the project the Cimarron was proposing would be the cause of another bloody escapade by the government’s gamut of security forces. He knew of course, it was also a way of making money for some of them. In his heart, he already knew that he would decline. He took out his 3-ringed diary and tore a page and wrote his answer.
Picking out a used envelope from his leather file case, he smudged the typescript on the address space and the upper left portion bearing the name of the sender with his sign pen. The two prospectors came to him, sensing that he had something for them.
As soon as they left with the response to Cimarron, they proceeded to the military camp at the outskirts of the Holy City and boarded a chopper that took them to Zamboanga City.
When the two arrived at a hotel in Zamboanga, a lady officer was around to receive their package, now a manila envelope with security markings FOR THE ADDRESSEE’S EYES ONLY and SAFEHAND. It was instantly shipped to the Philippine capital by way of a departing C-130 that had only recently completed fueling at the Zamboanga military base.
Back at the capital, Prof. Al-Julabi’s, letter was opened and read first by an aide. He reported the contents of the note to the huge consternation of the high government official Cimarron. At the time, the prospectors were having a good time. They were called directly by Cimarron and ordered to go back to the capital. They received a fierce scolding from Cimarron and his most trusted man, Col. Esconde.
Cimarron told the two, “I did not send you over there to give me this note. I do not want a “no” for an answer.”
“We are very sorry Sir! Our fault! We did not try to convince him.”
Cimarron was more furious, “Juls does not need convincing if he had already made up his mind. I gave you a long lecture in preparation for your trip. I told you specifically, not to give him my letter until you talked about the current situation and the need for funds in the movement!!!”
He berated and lambasted the prospectors for days on end.
After more than a week, when the two appeared in front of him again, Cimarron’s anger had simmered down. “I called you because I want you to go back there.”
“But, Sir...???” The two were visibly dismayed. “The good Professor, as you said, has made up his mind already and we could no longer convince him!”
“Neither could I.” Cimarron said.
The two looked at each other and merely nodded.
“But you can look for another candidate.”
Cimarron’s men appeared relieved and thrilled at the prospect of going back from where they left off in Zamboanga City. Those girls were really lovely and now we’re going back! Damn!!! One of them thought.
Ramon and a combined team of local and foreign investigators from the Australian International Deployment Team (IDT) were looking at the photographs detailing the gunshot wounds of the victims. Examination of the punctures can determine the firearm and its caliber and along with it the type of bullet used.
Police Major Ellie Lovejoy, one of the IDT members from Australia, was studying a variety of evidence on five long makeshift crime laboratory tables that were assembled by his group.
Ramon addressed Ellie about the idea of the combined team’s plan to mount test shots of sample weapons that were recently brought by chopper from where, Ramon could not tell.
Ellie replied, “Agreed, Ramon. My team and yours are already preparing to make initial shot pattern examinations to find out the approximate distance at which the guns were fired. They will try to determine that by testing specific firearms and ammunition combinations at known distances.”
“Okay that is good, buddy.”
Major Lovejoy’s assistant Helen Wise came up from the path behind where Ramon stood and brandished two different firearms. One an AK – 47 and the other, an M-14. Both were high powered rifles and good for assault. “We are digging for whatever fired bullets we can find and the doctors are extracting slugs from the bodies as fast as they can. Everything else will have to be recovered at the scene. These will also be examined” she said.
“Thanks dear. I can’t do these all without you,” Ellie told his second in command.
Ellie explained to Ramon, “You see, the fired bullets will help eliminate possibilities by providing more general characteristics like the caliber and physical features of the rifling impressions and the places where the bullets came from.”
Then Helen filled in again for Ramon’s benefit, “As you will notice, Sir, Patrick and Graham there are already working some of the evidence we have at hand.”
Ramon observed that an initial small pile of slugs, evidence cartridges and shotshell casings were already being subjected by the Australian team members to microscopic study.
“Patrick is especially good at determining characteristics on these pieces of evidence bullets that can be compared to test-fired bullets from replicas of the suspect firearms to further zero in on the actual type of firearms of the perpetrators of the Saluag Island carnage,” Helen said.
Patiently, other members of the forensic team were gathering any and all available cartridge cases or shotshell casings. Again, Ramon was told, the examinations can determine the caliber or gauge, the maker and whether there are marks of value for comparison. The images of the cartridge cases and shotshell casings in question can be scanned into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s worldwide database called DRUGFIRE.
Australia is able to access the FBI technology on a science and technology sharing program that began a few years back.
Through the DRUGFIRE, one is able to compare shotshell casings with evidence from other shooting incidents. The characteristics of these evidence cartridge cases and shotshell casings that can be seen on a microscope and can help to determine whether they were fired in a specific firearm.
Examining slugs also found and marked as evidence on the other hand, can determine the size of the shot, the gauge of the slug, and the maker. This also goes with the examinations of wadding components.
Gunshot residues deposited on the other evidence such as clothing will differ with the distance from the muzzle of the firearm to the target. The patterns of gunshot residues can be duplicated, but in this case not with a questioned firearm and ammunition combination but with replica firearms and bullets fired into test materials at known distances.
These patterns serve as a basis for estimating muzzle-to-body or muzzle-to-garment distances.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ultimately, the prospectors came back and travelled they did in many parts of Mindanao. After days and days of wandering over Davao City, Iligan City, Jolo, Sulu – sometimes hating the job that was given to them – in Zamboanga City where they took their rest and recreation, they chanced upon the movement called People of the Chosen Tribe. Their leader was giving a speech in a Muslim-dominant state university.
The prospectors listened with awe. Afterwards, with an interpreter in tow, they came to the small group where he was animatedly explaining something about jihad (war), kaadilan (justice), and the oppression from the kafir and the satrubs (the enemy and the infidels). At once, the prospectors called their highly placed superior. The superior, at the time, along with his trusted people, who were listening in to the call that was placed on speaker phone, decided finally they have their man. The superior called Cimarron said the man fits description of the one who shall stand in for Al-Julabi. Al-Julabi himself must go away.
Ecstatic while communicating with Cimarron, their superior officer and benefactor, the prospectors forgot where they were. They were giving each other high fives, already in the mood for celebrating. However, when they noticed everyone was looking at them, they realized the time was not right and they were definitely in a very wrong place.
On the same day of their monumental discovery and immediately getting the green light to approach the People of the Chosen Tribe leader, they thought about their assured promotions in the armed forces. That was where they belonged. The leader was intrigued by the strangers’ presence and volunteered to help them with anything they might probably want. The prospectors said they wanted nothing; they wanted no one except that they badly needed him, also to be their own leader in another, much bigger, much more successful movement.
That instantly got the leader’s attention. It didn’t take long; the leader was receptive to their scripted pitch. So the prospectors successfully negotiated with the leader and they inked an agreement with him on midnight of that day.
The leader considered the signing of the agreement a momentous decision. He went home, not saying anything. But all his kin around him noticed. He acted very strangely. He was certainly not himself. It was as if the jinns and the angels of Al’lah (S.W.H.) conspired to make something out of him that he was both afraid of and yet had been dearly aspiring for. A part of him said that he could, and that, he should take the challenge and become equal to it. The other part of him told him to run away from it. To give vent to his fears.... not to let himself be an instrument of anything other than the peaceable faith of Islam, but that did not happen.
He went to where the prospectors would take him. The part of him that dreamt of big things and a celebrated vindication for his people, had won.
For more than a year, he was gone. He had only the clothes at his back and nothing else. They forbid him from even bringing a bag, neither even just a small sachet of toothpaste in his pockets. They said he would not need anything. Everything will be provided for. Back home meanwhile, his friends and relatives were told stories by witnesses from the school about his having been recruited. Recruited for what and by whom, some had asked.
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” His relatives exclaimed in defense. “It must only be for something truly important!”
“And those people who got him, must only be for Al’lah (S.W.H.) since nothing could be more significant.” Another said.
At times, they fought and quarreled over his journey. And on and on the stories went in their small enclave of scarcely educated men.
The leader of the People of the Chosen Tribe eventually went home, healthy muscle sinews now visible in his hands and in many parts of his body. In heavy sweat he walked the path toward the small house his relatives shared with him and his brothers. His hands greatly burdened by three huge bags that he was told to open only at home and in utmost secrecy, he arrived to eagerly awaiting relatives and neighbors. Although he was sternly instructed that were it possible, even those people whom he trust should never be able to even have a glimpse inside the bag.
Nevertheless, this did not happen. He returned home to consult with his competent and learned parents, in reality just foster parents. Only he and his brothers were alive. His parents earlier died of hunger and starvation.
He and his foster kin gathered around the bag. They were shocked and filled with glee when they saw more than two million Philippine pesos inside the bag in denominations of one thousand, five hundred and one hundred. Below the money, there were at least one hundred magazine clips of .45-cal ammunition. The two smaller bags contained twenty .45-cal pistols, holsters and leather belts with ammunition clip holders. Volumes of documents also packed side by side with the short firearms. One of his foster uncles said laughing, if they really want you to start a little war, they really, really thought of everything!
Suddenly, the leader of the Yakan People of the Chosen Tribe leader lifted his arms looked up to the heavens, his lips trembling. He was intently praying. He thanked Al’lah for his very good fortune. His Tausug foster relatives looked at him and then smiled broadly at each other. Their ward just struck a gold mine – not a bad one for a Yakan.
posted by Cyberpark at 8:45 PM
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