Filipino sultan who staged deadly 2013 ‘invasion’ of Malaysian state of Sabah dies of kidney failure age 76
Malaysia has governed the resource-rich frontier Sabah region of timberlands and palm oil plantations in northern Borneo as its second-largest federal state since the 1960s.
The leader of a sultanate in the southern Philippines that staged a 2013 invasion of a bustling Malaysian state and sparked a deadly security crisis has died of kidney failure, his family and followers said Sunday.
Sultan Esmail Kiram II died at age 76 late Saturday at a hospital in southern Zamboanga city and left an order for his sultanate and followers to pursue a claim to Sabah state in neighbouring Malaysia, according to sultanate spokesman Abraham Idjirani.
“One of his instructions was the pursuit of the Sabah claim through peaceful means for the welfare of the Filipino people,” Idjirani said.
Although largely dismissed as a vestige from a bygone era, Kiram’s Muslim sultanate, based in the southern Philippine province of Sulu, stirred up a crisis between Malaysia and the Philippines when his younger brother and about 200 followers, dozens of them armed, barged into Sabah’s coastal village of Lahad Datu in February 2013.
Malaysia responded by sending troops and launching airstrikes in weeks of sporadic fighting that killed dozens of people before the standoff eased.
Kiram’s younger brother who led that invasion survived the intense clashes and managed to return home in the southern Philippines, where he died last year of a heart attack, Idjirani said.