Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said today the Philippine authorities informed them that Hapilon was believed to have escaped Marawi.
“So most probably Mahmud is with him,” Khalid told reporters during a Hari Raya open house in Bukit Aman here.
The two were reported to be heavily involved in a violent incursion to take control of Marawi on Mindanao island, which began on May 23. It was led by the Maute group, a radical Islamist outfit.
Khalid said although Mahmud’s escape from the city was not fully confirmed, the Philippine authorities had reported that he was alive.
Earlier this week, media outlets reported that Mahmud, a former university lecturer who helped finance the Marawi siege by the extremists, was believed to have been killed during fighting there.
Singapore’s Straits Times (ST) quoted General Eduardo Ano of the Philippine military as saying that Mahmud had died on June 7 after being wounded last month.
The report said Malaysian counter-terrorism authorities could not confirm if Mahmud had died as his body had not been found.
Mahmud, also known as Abu Handzalah, was said to have assumed a leadership role among Maute militants in the Philippines, who have links to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.
The ST report said Mahmud was believed to have been designated as a successor of Hapilon, named as head of IS’ Southeast Asian wing.
Mahmud and his right-hand man, Mohd Najib Husen, who was killed in the Philippines much earlier, were identified as the chief recruiters for IS in Malaysia.
He was also said to be responsible for training and sending militants to fight in Syria and Iraq.
Among those he recruited was Malaysia’s first suicide bomber, Ahmad Tarmimi Maliki.
Mahmud himself received training at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan under Osama bin Laden while studying at Pakistan’s Islamabad Islamic University in the late 1990s.
He returned to Malaysia to lecture at Universiti Malaya. He fled to the Philippines after being exposed as a militant by Malaysian police in 2014.
Malaysia’s most wanted militant believed killed in Philippines