Jolo: US-trained Philippine troops were out to destroy the Robin Hood-like myth around a one-armed militant leader on a remote southern island, an army field commander said.
Radullan Sahiron, believed to have taken over the leadership of the deadliest militant group in the country, was now the focus of military operations on Jolo island, he said.
"I don't think he's that charismatic," Colonel Mark Supnet, a brigade commander on Jolo, told Reuters in an interview at an army base on Friday, referring to Sahiron.
Worshipped as a folk hero by rebels on Jolo and Basilan islands, Sahiron is the most senior and experienced surviving leader of the Abu Sayyaf after the killing of its chief and of its main planner in recent months.
Sahiron lost his right arm at the height of the secessionist wars in the 1970 when he was a leader of the Moro National Liberation Front that signed a peace deal with the government in 1996.
Local folk hero
That forced him to join the Abu Sayyaf and he rose to become a senior adviser to the now dead chieftain Khaddafy Janjalani.
"Some people say he's a local folk hero, like Robin Hood," said Supnet, while supervising supply runs by helicopter to troops patrolling Mount Tumatangis, the island's highest peak, where some Abu Sayyaf members are believed to be holed up.
"But we're now getting information from the local residents about his movements and activities. Like Janjalani and Abu Sulaiman, we will soon get Radullan."
Supnet said the morale of 7,000 troops tracking down the Al Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf was boosted by the recent deaths of the rebel group's two top leaders, Janjalani and Jainal Antel Sali, alias Abu Sulaiman.
