A local official on Friday warned that Islamic State-affiliated groups were still recruiting people to their cause of building up a caliphate in Southeast Asia.
“There are several reports we have been receiving that the recruitment activity is now ongoing in some other towns,” Lanao del Sur Assemblyman Zia Alonto Adiong said in a Palace news briefing Friday.
Those who would join were offered as much as P100,000 to lure them in continuing the fight, Housing Secretary Eduardo del Rosario said, as he backed calls by the military to have the imposition of martial law in Mindanao extended during the rehabilitation phase of Marawi City.
The Marawi siege had prompted President Rodrigo Duterte to place the entire Mindanao under martial law on May 23. The period was extended until the end of the year after the lapse of the 60-day limit imposed by the Constitution.
Del Rosario said the information came from barangays where recruitment is taking place.
Adiong also supported calls to extend martial law in Mindanao, citing persistent threats from terrorists.
This happened as a widow of a slain Islamist militant leader will be charged for allegedly using social media to recruit IS sympathizers to join the five-month siege of Marawi, authorities said.
Hundreds of local and foreign gunmen who had pledged allegiance to IS rampaged through Marawi starting in May, sparking the nation’s longest urban war that claimed more than 1,100 lives.
Karen Hamidon faces charges of inciting to rebellion for allegedly urging IS followers to travel to Marawi to fight troops in the nation’s first case of terrorism committed through online networks, senior state prosecutor Peter Ong said.
“[Hamidon] wilfully, unlawfully and feloniously incite(d) others to rise publicly and take arms against the Philippine government,” Ong said in a copy of the charge sheet, which he said was set to be filed before a local court this month.
Government investigators conducting undercover work and a forensic examination had accused Hamidon of using messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp, where they said she was “prolific in her recruitment and promotion activities for ISIS,” another name for IS.
“The Islamic State invites you to join in the Philippines. We note that the door to immigration is open to the cities of Marawi and [the southern region of] Mindanao,” state investigators quoted Hamidon as saying in a Telegram post.
Hamidon had denied the allegations, telling reporters last month she was an Islamic missionary who had used social media for religious purposes.
Hamidon was arrested in a Manila suburb in October and has since been detained in the capital.
She was married to Mohammad Jaafar Maguid, founder and leader of Ansarul Khilafa Philippines (AKP), a pro-IS militant group in the restive south which authori in the city of Davao that killed 15 people last year.
Troops said they had killed Maguid in January this year.
The military said militants loyal to IS, including those allied with AKP, had attacked Marawi in a bid to establish a Southeast Asian caliphate there.
Hamidon is also accused of recruiting Indians to join IS and the Indian government had asked the Philippines for help in investigating that case, according to a Justice department resolution. With AFP