PNP: MILF expert led Rizal Day bombers

Detained terrorist suspect Saifullah Yunos has admitted having led the Rizal Day bombers in wreaking havoc at five points in Metro Manila on Dec. 30, 2000, police said yesterday.

Philippine National Police chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. said police interrogation of Yunos has confirmed allegations that he led the five simultaneous terrorist attacks that killed 22 people and wounded nearly a hundred others.

"They have been subjected to interrogation and what we have now is the confirmation that indeed (Yunos) is the one who led the bombing(s) in December 2000," Ebdane said.

Powerful bombs exploded simultaneously in a Light Railway Transit coach at Blumentritt station and Plaza Ferguson in front of the US embassy in Manila; a passenger bus traveling along EDSA in Cubao, Quezon City; a cargo terminal at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Pasay City, and an abandoned gas station near Dusit Hotel in Makati City.

Ebdane said the arrest of Yunos and Egyptian Dia Algabre has bolstered earlier suspicions that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was involved in a series of terrorist bombings in Metro Manila and Mindanao.

"It has also (strengthened) links of these personalities to specific organizations," he said. "(We) established that (Yunos) is (with the) MILF."

Algabre remains "under preventive detention" because of his alleged links with international terrorist organizations," he added.

Yunos and Algabre are detained in separate cells at Camp Crame in Quezon City, while undergoing tactical interrogation, along with Indonesian Fathur Rohman al-Ghozie, who has been convicted of illegal possession of explosives.

During a confrontation at Camp Crame recently, Saifullah was identified by al-Ghozie, an alleged Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) bomb expert, as the one who planned the Rizal Day bombings.

Police said Yunos heads the MILF special operations group, which has been blamed for a series of attacks on civilian targets in Metro Manila and Mindanao.

But MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said the MILF has no links with either Yunos or Algabre, who identified himself to be an Egyptian missionary.

"Yunos is not an MILF member nor a leader of the so-called special operations group," he said.

Kabalu said the 12,500-strong rebel group was not engaged in terrorism.

"We are revolutionaries fighting for a legitimate cause," he said. "We are fighting for freedom."

PNP intelligence director Chief Superintendent Jesus Versosa said his men had traced the connection between Yunos and Algabre to as far back as the Afghan war in the 1980s.

"It was during that time that they were able to establish ties with each other," he said.

Intelligence sources said Yunos has long been suspected to have direct access to some al-Qaeda leaders in the Middle East.

"This theory was further bolstered after the arrest of Algabre, an Egyptian national believed to be one of the 12 al-Qaeda operatives reported to be operating in Mindanao," a source said.

Yunos, a demolition expert, studied Shariah law in Pakistan in the 1990s, intelligence sources added.

The STAR learned that Algabre had lived in Cotabato City, where he has a Filipina wife and a child, who had studied in one of the city’s elementary schools.

Algabre was also detained for large-scale recruitment in Davao City in 2000.

Court records in Davao City showed Algabre and his wife Marietta were arrested by agents of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) on Feb. 11, 2000 after their recruitment agency was found to have no license from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration to send workers abroad.

Algabre and Marietta used to own the Azarock Manpower Pooling Services, which had offices at Dare Core Building, along Dakila Drive in Davao City.

The PAOCTF arrested the Algabres upon the complaint of a certain Francis Fino of Tinikling street in Matina, who wanted to know if Azarock had a license to operate.

However, the court granted the Algabre couple bail in 2001 after they argued that they were not recruiting people for overseas employment.

Police intelligence officials said Yunos and Algabre were responsible for several bomb attacks in Metro Manila and Mindanao.

Yunos and Algabre were arrested in Lumbia Airport in Cagayan de Oro City last Sunday while about to board a flight for Metro Manila.

When he was arrested, Yunos had his face bandaged, apparently to hide his identity.

American officials are keen on questioning Yunos and Algabre.

In Lanao del Sur, military planes bombed the former MILF stronghold in Camp Bushra in Butig Thursday to flush out the comrades of Yunos.

Maj. Gen. Cristolito Balaoing, commander of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, said that they have tracked down the terrorists in the mountains near the border of Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao provinces.

The terrorists were planning to bomb various strategic points in Cagayan de Oro City, he added.

Balaoing said aircraft had to be used because artillery fire could not pierce the thickly forested area near Camp Bushra, the MILF’s second largest camp, which troops captured in 2000 during the all-out war launched by then President Joseph Estrada.

"We have to be on their track and capture them before they could do more harm to civilians with their bombs," he said.

Balaoing said the bombs carried by the terrorists were similar to those used in the Davao Airport and Sasa Wharf blasts which killed a number of civilians.

The terrorists intended to bomb and topple transmission lines of the National Power Corp. in Lanao del Sur, he added. — With Bong Fabe