Task group formed to probe attack vs Maguindanao exec
COTABATO CITY—The police in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) has formed a special investigation task group (SITG) to fast-track the investigation into Monday’s attempt to kill Vice Mayor Mohammad Omar Samama of Datu Piang town in Maguindanao del Sur.
Police Lt. Col. Jopy Ventura, the BARMM police spokesperson, said Brig. Gen. Romeo Macapaz, the region’s police director, had created “SITG Samama” headed by Police Col. Ryan Bobby Paloma, acting police director of Maguindanao del Sur, to go after and identify Samama’s assailant.
Ventura said the police were considering Samama’s shooting as a “suspected election-related incident.”
Samama, who is seeking reelection in May, was speaking in a podium during a relief operation at the evacuation site in Barangay Magaslong around 10 a.m. when a single gunfire was heard, hitting him in the abdomen. He is now being treated in a hospital in Cotabato City.
Condemnations
The incident happened even as the local police said the area was heavily secured by policemen and soldiers and the vice mayor was with his father, Mayor Victor Samama, during the event.
Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez Jr. condemned the attack, calling it a “brazen act of violence, an affront to the rule of law and has no place in a peaceful and humane society.”
“Our thoughts are with Vice Mayor Samama and his family. We are praying for his immediate recovery and safety so that he may continue to serve his people,” Galvez said in a statement Tuesday.
Brig. Gen. Donald Gumiran, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said they were coordinating with the police in the probe, as he also condemned the attack, saying the “violence against a duly elected public official is an affront to the peace and security efforts we continue to uphold in the region.”
