GENERAL SANTOS CITY — The local police transferred on Thursday the wife of a top leader of the Islamic State-inspired Maute group, who was arrested here last month, to Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City.
Insp. Willy Perez, deputy chief of the city police Station 7, said suspect Nafish Pundug was moved out of the detention facility following the approval of a petition for her transfer to the Taguig jail.
Perez said the suspect, along with escorts from the city police and the Army-led Joint Task Force GenSan, boarded a commercial flight from the city airport to Manila on Thursday morning.
Perez said Nafisah’s transfer to Taguig was necessary as she was considered a “high risk” detainee. He said the suspect was deemed an “influential personality” in the circle of the Maute, being the wife of its reported leader, Owaidah Abdulmajib Marohombsar alias Abu Dar.
Marohombsar is also the supposed new “emir” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in Southeast Asia.
“Considering the risks, she should be placed in a more secure detention facility,” he said in a radio interview.
Perez said the suspect’s transfer would also lessen the threat of a possible rescue by members of the terror group.
Nafisah was arrested by Army and police operatives on July 16 in an operation in Purok Maunlad, Barangay Apopong based on a standing warrant for violation of Republic Act 9516, or possession of explosive materials.
She was jailed at the Marawi City jail but managed to escape in 2016.
Her arrest came after a joint raid by various intelligence and law enforcement units in Zone 3, Block 4 in Barangay Fatima, which also led to the death of alleged Maute “bomb-maker” and number two man, Najib Calimba Pundug, alias Najib Hussein. (Perla Lena/PNA)
