Some 600 members of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) remain active in at least three camps in the southern Philippines, a Time magazine special report on al-Qaeda’s terrorist arm in Southeast Asia said.
Citing a "recent secret intelligence report by the military" dated Dec. 8, Time reported on the wide reach of JI in Mindanao, saying the southern island seems to have emerged as an alternative to Afghanistan as a site for terrorist training.
Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita had said only 31 JI militants were training guerrillas in bomb-making in Mindanao, mostly in areas controlled by the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Ermita, quoting military intelligence reports, said the Qaeda terrorist organization recently gave a JI handler $15,000 for the training. The money was received and disbursed by Indonesian JI member Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi before he was gunned down in an alleged shootout with troops in North Cotabato last October, Ermita said.
JI, considered the Southeast Asian arm of Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network, is blamed for the October 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia that killed some 200 people.
Before his death, Al-Ghozi had told Philippine prosecutors that he and JI operations chief Hambali also helped carry out a string of bombings in Metro Manila in December 2000. Hambali is now in the custody of the United States.
President Arroyo vowed to go after remnants of the JI and the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group, which is also allied with the al-Qaeda network, following the capture of senior Abu Sayyaf leader Ghalib Andang, alias Commander Robot.
Andang, charged as the principal suspect in the April 2000 kidnapping of Western tourists and Malaysian and Filipino resort workers from Sipadan, Malaysia, was taken in last week after a gunfight with soldiers in Indanan town, Sulu.