Filipino IS female finance, logistics facilitator nabbed
Racma Dinggo Hassan allegedly of Dawlah Islamiyah is arrested while being treated for motor accident injuries at a hospital.
SULTAN KUDARAT: A female alleged finance and logistics officer of a pro-IS local Filipino terror group was arrested while she was receiving treatment at a hospital in the southern province of Sultan Kudarat last weekend.
Racma Dinggo Hassan allegedly of the Dawlah Islamiyah terror group was arrested by police in a ward at the Sultan Kudarat Provincial Hospital in Isulan municipality where she was being treated for injuries sustained during a motor accident recently and other illnesses.
Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, the director of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region police, and Brig. Gen. Jimili Macaraeg of Police Regional Office-12 (PRO-12) confirmed Saturday’s (May 6) arrest, PhilStar reported.
Joint operatives of the Sultan Kudarat Provincial Police Office supported by PRO-12 and units of the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office led by Nobleza jointly conducted the arrest operation.
Racma’s arrest warrants related to various criminal cases were issued by Regional Trial Court Branch 13 in Cotabato City.
Officials of various local government units in the neighbouring provinces of Cotabato, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte and Sultan Kudarat told PhilStar that Racma was a finance officer and logistics facilitator of the Dawlah Islamiyah, which is also known as the Maute Group.
The Dawlah Islamiya, their allies the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters terror group and the Al-Khobar extortion group were said to be responsible for the 2014 bombings of buses and establishments in central Mindanao whose owners refused to pay “protection money”.
Racma is the widow of Norodin Hassan, a Dawlah Islamiyah emir or leader, who was killed in an encounter with police and military troops in Tunganon village, Carmen municipality, Cotabato, in January 2022.
It is not clear whether Racma is related to Salahuddin Hassan, another Dawlah Islamiyah leader who was killed along with his wife during an army and police raid on the group’s hideout in a remote area of Talayan municipality, Maguindanao del Sur, in October 2021.
Salahuddin was suspected to have been the founder of the Al-Khobar group.
Dawlah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf terror group laid siege on Lanao Del Sur’s provincial capital city of Marawi in 2017 in a bid to establish IS’s wilayat or territory for the Southeast Asia region.
The siege resulted in a five-month urban battle that took more than 1,200 lives, mostly of militants, before government troops retook the city in October of that year.