Lorenzana watching out for possible return of Filipino fighters from Middle East

October 24, 2017

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana confirmed that they are monitoring the possible return of Filipino terrorists from the Middle East. “Recently, I got a message from our embassy in Baghdad and we have this information from intelligence and they have a list of names, long list of names of Malaysians and Indonesians fighting in Iraq, couple of Filipinos who might come back. So we are monitoring these people,” he said “We do not know if they are coming back here or they have been killed in the Middle East... just a very few names ( of) Filipino Muslims fighting there. These came from the Kurdish intelligence fighting the insurgence or the terrorists in Syria. I have the list with me in my computer because it was sent in my email. We are watching for these people when they come back,” he added. Lorenzana said based on his estimate the list includes “about 30 Malaysians. the same number of Indonesians and then about three Filipinos.” He assured government authorities can capture these terrorists when they return to the country as long as they would not change their names. “If they are using the real names, the names that they are using there in the Middle East...  coming in then we'll get them,” Lorenzana said. “Suppose they will use other names, using aliases there. They can be back. We will never know because you must remember that we have tens of thousands of Filipinos working in the Middle East,” he added. Robina Asido/DMS