June 20, 2012 News: An outspoken official of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has asked former Commodore Ramon Farolan and now a columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) to check his data regarding the Albarka Incident on October 18, 2011 where 19 Special Forces were killed and allegedly mutilated by MILF fighters in that village in Basilan.

Khaled Musa, deputy chairman of the MILF Committee on Information, described Farolan’s column as more of fiction rather than the handiwork of a real columnist.

“His instinct or training for overkill as a military man is still very much alive even in his writing,” he said, even as he disclosed that the MILF peace panel is planning to hold a dialogue with opinion-makers of major broadsheets in Manila after their successful dialogue with members of the Philippine media at the Quezon City Circle last June 15.

“Please check your data with the finding results of the investigation of the incident by the International Monitoring Team (IMT) tasked by the MILF and government peace panels after the bloody incident almost ignited another all-out war in Mindanao,” Musa added.

The IMT’s findings, Musa disclosed, attributed most of the violations not to the Commander Dan Asnawi but to government forces who wanted to arrest him at all cost.

He did not elaborate pursuant to the non-disclosure agreement of the parties on IMT’s confidential report.

In his column at the Philippine Daily Inquirer titled “Remembering Al-Barka,” last June 18,  Farolan wrote the following: “Just in case the Armed Forces leadership may have forgotten, today marks the eighth month of the massacre of our soldiers at Al-Barka, Basilan. It was on Oct. 18 last year that 19 army troopers were killed by MILF elements led by Commander Dan Asnawi. Some were captured and tortured, their bodies mutilated, and their heads cut off. It was not the work of honorable combatants. It was the work of bloodthirsty criminals who continue to move around freely waiting for the next opportunity to commit similar atrocities.”

“Where did Farolan get that information that the MILF ever mutilated the bodies of the slain?” asked Musa, recalling that the thirteen Marines beheaded in the same spot in July 2010 were not the handiwork of the MILF but Abu Sayyaf’s.

This was the official report of the government and MILF Coordinating Committee on Cessation of Hostilities (CCCHs) and the Bantay Ceasefire after their investigation of the incident few weeks after.

“Please get hold of that report of the CCCHs and Bantay Ceasefire on that beheading incident, set the record, and correct yourself,” Musa urged Farolan.