THE United States added the Maute group as an affiliate of the Islamic State in its list of foreign terrorist organizations, a move that Malacañang welcomed Wednesday.
Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said the US action reaffirmed the government’s long-held belief that the Maute group, which overran Marawi City last year, was composed of local terrorists aided by foreign extremists.
The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Tuesday included Maute group along with Abu Musab Al-Barnawi of Nigeria and Mahad Moalim of Somalia, and seven groups from Bangladesh, Egypt, Somalia, Nigeria and Tunisia to its sanction list.
“This likewise recognizes the decisive action we have taken in liberating Marawi from these terrorists, which resulted in the success of the government in thwarting the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the area and the containing of the rebellion from spreading to other parts of the Philippines,” Roque added.
It took five months for the military and police to retake Marawi City, in fighting that left more than 1,100 people dead and that sparked fears that ISIS would gain a foothold in Southeast Asia.
“Terrorism, indeed, knows no borders and the inclusion of the Maute group in the list of specially designated global terrorists and foreign terrorist organizations as an affiliate group of ISIS shows the solidarity and resolve of the international community to flush out evil forces to make the world safe and secure,” the statement added.
A Defense department official said the inclusion of the Maute group in the list of global terrorist groups would also fortify efforts to track and freeze foreign funding from international organizations. This, said Defense spokesman Arsenio Andolong, would stop foreign groups from providing logistical support for local terrorists.
“Such declaration from foreign countries will of course invariably help us in many ways in our fight against local terrorist and their foreign cohorts,” Andolong said.
Armed Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Bienvenido Datuin Jr. said the inclusion of the Maute group would make it easier to check money trails, financial sources, logistics lines and conduits of terror groups in foreign countries that may have connections with local violent extremists, he added.
The US declaration comes in the wake of reports that 40 foreign fighters had slipped into Mindanao.
Foreign financial aid to the Lanao-based Maute terror group will become more constricted with the United States’ official tagging of the group as a terrorist organization, officials said Wednesday.