Authorities are looking for the 10-year-old daughter of the alleged Indonesian couple behind the suicide bombing at the Jolo Cathedral in Sulu last month that left 23 churchgoers and security personnel dead and almost 100 others injured.
Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Ano said the girl will play a vital role in the identification of the Indonesian suicide bombers as well as their connections to international terrorist groups.
“Based on the information provided by our sources in the mountains of Sulu, it was confirmed that there is a 10-year-old daughter who is currently in Sulu,” said Ano in a press briefing in Camp Crame, Quezon City. “She was entrusted to the Abu Sayyaf Group under Hatib Hadjan Sawadjaan in Patikul. This was also confirmed by some of the suspects who surrendered to us in connection with the Jolo bombing,” he added.
The Philippine National Police had earlier revealed that it has finished the deoxyribonucleic acid testing of all the body parts recovered inside the Jolo Cathedral. Four of them were not from the identified victims. This bolstered the suicide bombing theory of the government.
“So we are looking for this daughter. We would like to interview her to determine where they came from and for cross-matching of DNA test result,” said Ano.
The SILG said that it is important that she is found as the ASG could be grooming her to become a suicide bomber in the future. “We believe that this daughter would later become a suicide bomber because of a cult-like belief that they would go to heaven if they commit suicide bombing,” Ano said. (Aaron Recuenco)