Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said although the police had DNA samples from Mahmud’s family, the Philippine authorities had yet to ask them to confirm if the body they had found was that of Mahmud, who reportedly was killed last month.
“We want to bring his body back if the family requests for it,” he said.
“After all, he is our countryman, no matter who he was or what he did,” Fuzi told reporters during a visit to the Special Action Unit (UTK) training centre here on Saturday.
He said this when replying to questions on whether the government had confirmed that the former lecturer-turned-militant had died in Marawi last month.
Fuzi said the police had taken DNA samples from Mahmud’s family members on their own initiative.
“We are in constant communication with the Philippine police to confirm Mahmud’s identity but they have no control over the remains,” he said.
CNN Philippines reported on Oct 19 that Mahmud may have been killed along with 13 other terrorists during the military’s overnight operations on terrorist hideouts in Marawi.
Mahmud, 39, was known among members of extremist groups there as Abu Handzalah.
He was said to have been eyed by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist network to be installed as its new emir for Southeast Asia.
He was in charge of recruiting fighters and was a point man for foreigners wanting to join extremist forces in the Philippines which had recently aligned with IS.
Mahmud was also reported to have been 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, a former Islamic Studies professor at Universiti Malaya, had trained at an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s while studying in Pakistan, and fled to the Philippines in 2014 when Malaysian authorities exposed him as an extremist.