Another suspected Indon ‘terrorist’ nabbed while trying to flee country

A principal suspect in the 2000 Rizal Day bombings was arrested Wednesday at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Pasay City while trying to sneak out of the country.

Airport police apprehended Indonesian Agus Dwikarno and four other suspected international terrorists as they passed through a metal detector at the departure area.

Seized from them were explosive materials and other sophisticated equipment which airport security men believe are used in terrorist operations.

While Dwikarno and the four unidentified suspects were being investigated, the Indonesian Embassy filed a diplomatic protest with the Department of Foreign Affairs.

It is not known if the four others were Indonesian citizens.

Police believe Dwikarno and the four belong to the Jemaah Islamiya, the Southeast Asian branch of al-Qaeda, the international terrorist network of Osama bin Laden who is tagged as the primary suspect in last year’s Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the United States.

Intelligence sources told The STAR yesterday Dwikarno and the four arrived in the country from Bangkok last March 11 aboard a Lufthansa Airlines flight.

Immigration agents also arrested yesterday four other suspected terrorists from the Middle East and Japan for trying to enter the country with tampered British passports.

The four are Kamal Uddin Ali, Vinit Shah, Uddin Ahmed Jashim, and Noboru Makishima.

The nationalities of the four were not given.

Immigration officers seized from them a list of names of their contacts in the Philippines, Canada, India, and Bangladesh.

At first, the four denied to be together but later admitted during interrogation to know one another.

Immigration Commissioner Andrea Domingo said an expert from the British Embassy examined their passports and found them to be genuine, but that the photographs of the real holders were removed and replaced with those of the suspects.

The embassy report said the four could be members of an international terrorist group, who have been assigned to operate in Southeast Asia, she added.

Earlier, Domingo placed in the immigration blacklist six suspected leaders of al-Qaeda to prevent them from entering the country.

Five of the suspects are Ruiduan Isamuddin, Yazid Sufaat Moussaqui, and Abu Bakar Bashir, all Indonesians; and Wall Khan Amin Shah, an Afghan.

Domingo said the others who remained at large are the object of a manhunt by police forces worldwide.

"They were placed both in the blacklist and watchlist to ensure that they won’t be able to come here if they are abroad or they will be arrested if they are already in the Philippines," she said.

Domingo said investigations have confirmed the involvement of the suspects in terror plots hatched by al-Qaeda cells in Southeast Asia, including the attack on the American warship USS Cole in Yemen and the Dec. 30, 2000 Rizal Day bombings in Metro Manila.

Quoting intelligence reports, Domingo said Isamuddin, alias Hasmbali, is al-Qaeda’s point man in Southeast Asia, and the right-hand man of the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, which planned the Rizal Day bombings that killed 22 people and wounded about a hundred others.

The Jemaah Islamiah is a secret Islamic organization suspected of possible links with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Singapore has detained 12 of its citizens and one Malaysian for allegedly plotting to bomb US targets in the city-state, while Malaysia has arrested dozens of suspects.

Bafana was said to have funded the Rizal Day bombings, while Bashir, a close associate of Hasmbali, was tagged as the leader of the plot to bomb the US Embassy in Singapore.

During preliminary investigation, Fathur admitted that he planned the bombing of a Light Rail Transit (LRT) coach in Blumentritt, Manila station on Dec. 30, 2000.

In his affidavit, Fathur said he planned the LRT bombing and that he wanted to bomb the four other places but decided to leave the decision to a certain Muklis.

"But I told Muklis that if possible, no persons should be harmed and I would have wanted to bomb an airport," read an excerpt from his affidavit. "I gave Muklis and his group the freedom to choose other targets."

Witnesses identified Muklis as the one who left a bag in the LRT coach shortly before a bomb exploded while the train was unloading passengers at Blumentritt station.

Apart from the LRT bombing on Rizal Day, terrorists also struck at Plaza Ferguson across the US Embassy in Manila, a cargo terminal in Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Pasay City, and an abandoned gasoline station near the Dusit Hotel in Makati, and a passenger bus traveling along EDSA in Cubao, Quezon City.

Speaking through an Indonesian interpreter, Fathur said the Rizal Day bombings were unleashed at the height of ousted President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trial to avenge the all-out war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Fathur said he and Muklis bought P70,000 worth of explosives in Cebu and brought them to Metro Manila, but he did not say if these were used in the Rizal Day bombings.

After his arrest in Quiapo, Manila on Jan. 15, Fathur was charged before the Department of Justice with murder, multiple frustrated murder and multiple attempted murder for the LRT bombing. – Rey Arquiza, Christina Mendez, Jaime Laude