{"id":155400,"date":"2018-03-06T06:01:15","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T11:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=155400"},"modified":"2018-03-06T06:01:15","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T11:01:15","slug":"military-bares-hapilons-successor-to-isis-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/03\/06\/military-bares-hapilons-successor-to-isis-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Military bares Hapilon\u2019s successor to ISIS leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cGovernment<\/a>
“The one who is standing as their emir or leader now, the one who replaced him is Abu Dar,” Major Ronald Suscano, spokesman of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division said. (Photo<\/a>: Philippine Military Analysis and Updates\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the government forces eliminated the leader or \u201cemir\u201d of all Islamic State (IS) forces in the Philippines in the Marawi siege last year, the Philippine army on March 5 identified the new successor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one who is standing as their emir or leader now, the one who replaced him is Abu Dar,\u201d Major Ronald Suscano, spokesperson of the Army\u2019s 1st<\/sup> Infantry Division said.<\/p>\n

Suscano was referring to Isnilon Hapilon, who was killed on October 16 last year, as the soldiers were in the middle of their operations in the war-torn city of Marawi. Hapilon\u2019s death, together with Maute group co-founder Omar Maute\u2019s death marked the nearing end of the five-month siege.<\/p>\n

According to Suscano, Abu Dar is a \u201cfull-blooded\u201d Maranao, and a native of Pagayawan, Lanao del Sur. He added that the new emir was one of the 300 fighters that escaped before the government forces were able to reclaim Marawi.<\/p>\n

Suscano said that these remaining fighters are regrouping and recruiting to plan other similar attacks.<\/p>\n

(Read: Army: 300 Maute fighters escaped, regrouped before Marawi siege end<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Furthermore, he said that he and his group escaped out of Marawi with \u201ca large amount of money\u201d which serves as their funds.<\/p>\n

In a comparison of the two emirs, Suscano said Hapilon was more \u201cradical\u201d as he was more experienced and was older. But he emphasized that Dar has a lot of foreign terrorist connections.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am just not sure how old Hapilon was\u2026 Abu Dar, among the sub-leaders still alive, stands as the one who is more advanced and knows all the connections, which is why he replaced Hapilon as the emir or the leader,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

“There are foreign terrorists left [in Mindanao]. He is with them now. We just cannot say how many or disclose the identities of these foreign terrorists left,” Suscano added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the government forces eliminated the leader or \u201cemir\u201d of all Islamic State (IS) forces in the Philippines in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":121646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[47746,33605,14357,16762,47699],"class_list":["post-155400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-abu-dar","tag-emir","tag-isnilon-hapilon","tag-maute-group","tag-ronald-suscano","mauthors-bea-kirstein-t-manalaysay","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}