Four foreign terrorist cells still in RP?

As many as four foreign terrorist cells with links to the terrorist organization Al-Qaida of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden may still be operating in the country, warned Central Visayas police director Chief Superintendent Avelino Razon.

Razon was the head of the Presidential Security Group-Special Operations Group (PSG-SOG) that arrested Abdulhakim Alihashim Murad a few days before the visit of Pope John Paul II in January 1995. Murad was with a group allegedly tasked to assassinate the pontiff.

Murad was extradited to the US and later convicted, along with ring leader Ramzi Ahmad Yousef, of the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.

Razon, former Western Police District (WPD) chief, made the warning as Sen. Rodolfo Biazon also warned that Bin Laden may seek refuge among his friends in the country, including the Al-Qaida terrorist cells that may be operating here.

"There may still be four terrorist cells still in place because we were only able to roll up the cell headed by Murad," Razon said of Murad, who confessed to hatching a plan, code named "Project Bojinka," to use planes in destroying vital targets in the US.

Also yesterday, the local intelligence community claimed that one of the suicide bombers who took part in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC may also have passed through Asian countries, including the Philippines, before hijacking the planes used in the attacks.

Among the first terrorists known to have frequented the country was Murad. When he was arrested, authorities recovered Arabic documents indicating that some 19 foreigners trained with Abu Sayyaf bandits in a camp in Lian, Batangas, Razon said.

During his interrogation, Murad also admitted that Yousef masterminded a series of bombings in the country in 1994 to test Project Bojinka.

The test bombings were conducted at the Miss Universe beauty pageant at Roxas Boulevard, where a pipe bomb killed one; at a Wendy’s outlet at Nagtahan on Nov. 13; at a theater in Makati on Dec. 1 and on a Philippine Airlines flight PR 434 bound for Japan on Dec. 11. – With Rey Arquiza, Efren Danao, Roel Pareño, Paolo Romero