Int’l terror tag sought for Rajah Solaiman Movement

The Philippine government is urging the US and the United Nations to include the home-grown Rajah Solaiman Movement (RSM) in their list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), a security official disclosed yesterday.

Ricardo Blancaflor, executive director of Malacañang’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force (ATTF), said the move to include the RSM is being considered since most of its members are highly educated and have huge financial resources.

Blancaflor conceded it would take some effort to succeed in having the RSM included in the FTOs which are done independently by the US and the UN.

Hampering the efforts to blacklist the RSM is the absence of an anti-terrorism law in the country which could allow the government to make its own terror lists.

"We don’t have proscription in the country and the designation process (for a terror group) is under... UN resolution 1267, it is not within our power. It has to be (the) UN," Blancaflor told reporters at the sidelines of an anti-terrorism forum at the World Trade Center in Pasay City.

"They (UN and US) can do it (blacklist) on their own," he said.

Blancaflor admitted the Department of Foreign Affairs, which is a member of the ATTF, would be making some initiatives.

But this would entirely depend on the cooperation of UN member countries, he added.

"We’d be more than happy to cooperate with them because right now, proscription is not available in the Philippines," Blancaflor said.

Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, chief of the terrorism research of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore, supported the move to blacklist RSM.

Gunaratna stressed RSM is "much more dangerous than it seems."

"The US government must prove in that direction, the international community must move to recognize this group as a significant threat... this group will be able to sustain itself because of its foreign linkages... unless we track this group, it can survive and function because of a large support base," Gunaratna said.

He said the RSM "has shown its appetite for destruction by owning (up) to at least three terror attempts and two major attacks."

The RSM is group of Islam converts, which has been linked to a number of deadly assaults, including a February 2004 bombing that gutted the SuperFerry 14 and killed 116 people in the country’s worst terrorist attack.

The group has worked with other al-Qaeda-linked groups, like the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and the extremist Abu Sayyaf bandit group in southern Philippines, in plotting attacks and undertaking joint terror training in the dense jungles of central Mindanao, according to security officials.

Blancaflor said the RSM is far from being an ordinary terror group since its members believe that Filipino ancestors were Muslims before the Spaniards came.

He stressed RSM converts are more fanatic as they need to prove themselves.

Blancaflor stressed the members of the group are more intelligent and highly educated than those of the extremist Abu Sayyaf.

He said the RSM has enough financial resources that it can even hire high-priced lawyers to defend arrested members.

Unlike their counterparts from Mindanao-based terror groups, RSM members can easily blend in since they speak Filipino with no southern accent.