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Southeast Asia
MILF military chief buried
2012-05-07
The Egyptian-trained military leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front who died from cardiac arrest Thursday was buried beside the grave of MILF founder Salamat Hashim on a hill in the hinterland of Lanao del Sur in keeping with his wishes.

Ustadz Abdulazis Mimbantas was buried on Friday in keeping with the Islamic tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours.

Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF's vice chair for military affairs, said MILF members in Central Mindanao, the Zamboanga peninsula, and the island provinces of BasIlan and Sulu are mourning Mimbantas' death. He said, "He was buried beside the spot where our founding chairman was buried, That was the wish of our departed brother when he was still alive."

Mimbantas and Hashim, who founded the MILF in the early 1980s, both finished a degree in Islamic theology at the Al-Azzar University in Cairo.

Mimbantas died of cardiac arrest on Thursday while traveling from Maguindanao , where he and other members of the MILF's central committee visited for two days to hold discussions with the president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Akihiko Tanaka.

JICA has programs in impoverished communities covered by the ceasefire between the government and the MILF. The Japanese government also has representatives to the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team, which has been overseeing the enforcement of a government-MILF agreement since 2003.

Mimbantas was the MILF's vice chairman for religious and spiritual affairs, and subsequently its military leader when Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim vacated the post when he was named chairman of the rebel group after Hashim's death in 2003.
Educated as a theologian, he went from being a top spiritual leader to being the top military leader. Name that religion.
I know! It's Amish, right?
Posted by:ryuge

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