Rizal Day blast suspect withdraws guilty plea

Self-confessed bomber Hadji Moklis, alias Saifullah Muklis Yunos, has withdrawn his guilty plea and claimed he was forced to admit his participation in the bloody Rizal Day bombings in 2000.

Moklis maintained he "did not mean to admit" his participation in the bombings and claimed he was just a "fall guy."

This was the statement made by Moklis through his new lawyer, Fidel Macauyang, who filed a motion to withdraw the guilty plea yesterday before Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 54 Judge Lucia Purugganan.

In the three-page motion, Moklis claimed he was pressured by police authorities into admitting the charges. He said his relatives did not help him for fear of reprisal by the police.

Macauyang explained Yunos did not "fully comprehend" the charges against him because he spoke only a Muslim dialect and Arabic.

"When interviewed inside his cell at Camp Crame, Moklis, with tears falling, claimed he did not admit the charges. According to him, he did not fully understand the charges," Macauyang said.

He also claimed Moklis was beaten up in detention and forced to sign a written confession in which he had claimed that he was a member of a terrorist unit under the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that planned the bombing with the Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian-based Islamic fundamentalist group with links to the al-Qaeda network of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

"Most of the Muslim brothers arrested for allegedly perpetrating the different bombings in the country were made to confess under duress and intimidation, but with God’s intervention they were freed after the truth came out that they are all fall guys," the motion stated.

"With what the military is doing to civilians like Moklis, our country us certainly creating more enemies of the state instead of addressing the problem on terrorism by arresting the real terrorists," it added.

Moklis had earlier told police that the attacks were planned with the help of Indonesian bomber Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, who escaped in July from a police jail days before he was to be indicted for the December 2000 bombings.

Al-Ghozi had separately admitted his role in the attacks, and had acknowledged knowing Moklis when both of them were presented to give written depositions to the prosecutors.

For the government, State Prosecutor Peter Ong said the withdrawal of plea by Moklis would have no effect in the case.

"Regardless of Moklis’ plea, the government could ensure his conviction for multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder and multiple attempted murder for the bloody attack," Ong said.

"We have the same set of evidence to be presented in court, which we believe would prove his guilt," he added.

Moklis was among those charged for the bloody Dec. 30, 2000 bombings that left 22 people dead and over a hundred others wounded. A total of 19 people were killed when a bomb exploded at the Light Railway Transit (LRT) Blumentritt station in Manila, a man was killed in a bus explosion along EDSA in Cubao, Quezon City and two police officers were killed in the explosion at an abandoned gas station along EDSA in Makati City.

Aside from Moklis and Al-Ghozi, others who were indicted were Bafana Faiz, Isamuddin Riduan, alias Hambali; Mohamad Amir; Ustad Sali, Alim Pangalian, Zainal Paks, Salman Moro, Sammy Arinday and a certain Colonel Torres.

Only Moklis is under police custody while Al-Ghozi is still the subject of a nationwide manhunt after he escaped from Camp Crame last July 14. Hambali was arrested in Thailand last month by US authorities and is being held at an undisclosed place. The Philippines has said it wants to try Hambali for the bombings. - With AFP