INABANGA, Bohol – The remote barangay of Napo, here, where Joselito Melloria grew up, isn’t supposed to be the sort of quaint and tranquil by-the-river settlement that breeds an outlaw.
Yet, it is here, where the prodigal boy of Napo went away and returned a changed man: The affable Joselito had become a follower of the terrorist Abu Sayyaf Group.
He had changed so much that he’d become known by his nom de guerre: Abu Ali, meaning Father of Ali, a name associated with words like independent, dynamic, ready to take on challenges.
Joselito’s brother, Arnulfo, recalls that his younger brother had just suddenly showed up, with 10 companions, around noon of April 11.
One of the blankets they offloaded was full of high-powered firearms.
“Natakot kami,” Arnulfo says. “May kasama siyang di namin kilala (We were overcome with fear; he had brought along others not known to us) …”
This was the same Joselito, the 10th child of 11 in the clan, who never tired of dreaming of better times and of leaving home to seek good fortune to help tide the family from hardship. This time, he had come back to the village as a stringer – guide, aide, fixer, all-around gopher – for the dreaded Abu Sayyaf.
“Mabait siya, kaya lang nakapunta sa … ibang lugar (He was a good boy; he just happened to drift into another place),” Arnulfo tells News5, in a tone so soft, so delicate, as though raising it one note would smother the fond memory of Joselito, the loved second-to-the-youngest in the family who had gravitated to Zamboanga.
There, Joselito related, he had married into a Muslim family in the military, that he had been given a position. Little did the family take it to mean that Joselito had gotten himself mixed up with a band of jihadist fighters and had moved up the ranks.
And so it was that, exactly one day after Joselito and his band of comrades touched down in the village, all hell broke loose. A firefight broke out. The village was churned upside down, inside out.
It was all that Arnulfo could do to ask for forgiveness from the folks of Napo, for the trouble that their Joselito had stirred up, the fear that the clash sowed, for the trauma and the perturbed peace in their village.
It was here, in the family house and the house of Arnulfo that pursuing government security forces poured withering fire, and the exchange of angry lead volleys unfolded.
Joselito managed to slip away, but he was to meet his own end a scant few days later, after a motorcycle ride to buy bread downtown in Clarin. He breathed his last at a lonely bunker that was intended to provide him succor.
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