MNLF seeks prosecution of robbers who wounded leader’s son

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September 27, 2026 | 4:21pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Commanders of the Moro National Liberation Front in this city and towns around seek a speedy prosecution of the motorcycle thieves who clashed on Thursday, September 24, with law-enforcers led by a barangay chairman, son of the MNLF’s top leader, who was hurt in the incident.

The wounded Datu Wawi Sema, chairman of Mother Barangay Tamontaka in this city, is the son of the MNLF's chairman, Muslimin Sema, who is also the regional labor and employment minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Pursuing personnel of different units of the Cotabato City Police Office arrested on Friday one of the four thieves, who, at gunpoint, together took on Thursday a motorcycle ridden by two Moro women in a heist in another barangay that Sema, volunteer community watchmen and personnel of the Cotabato City Police Station 3  cornered after a brief chase, but managed to escape after one of them pulled out a pistol and opened fire, hitting him in the right side of his neck.

The culprits also took the mobile phones of the motorcycle riders Yasmin Alamada Dumato and Nila Guiaman Ibrahim.

They abandoned the duo’s motorcycle then and escaped using their white minivan that policemen and barangay officials eventually found in a secluded spot in Tambak area in the nearby Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte.

Commanders of the MNLF and their central committee chairman, the father of the wounded Sema, on Sunday urged the director of the Cotabato City Police Office, Col. Jibin Bongcayao, and his subordinate officers to file corresponding criminal cases in absentia against the robbers using their detained accomplice as a witness against them.

The wounded Sema is still confined to the Notre Dame Hospital in Cotabato City. His father had ordered all MNLF members in the 37 barangays in Cotabato City and in different towns in the adjoining Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur provinces to help the police locate the companions of the suspect, who is now in police custody.