Foreign-trained bomber who bolted Cotabato jail recaptured

DATU ODIN SINSUAT, Shariff Kabunsuan – Combined police and Army operatives recaptured yesterday a foreign-trained bomber who escaped with 47 other inmates from the North Cotabato provincial jail last February.

Chief Inspector Fatima Malao, chief of the local police, said the suspect, Guindo Tukan, was undergoing litigation in connection with his alleged involvement in the deadly 2003 bombing of the bus terminal in Kidapawan City when he and a cohort, Datu Ali Sultan, were sprung by some 50 secessionist guerrillas from the North Cotabato provincial jail.

The rebels also set free 45 other inmates, four of whom have been recaptured in separate operations between February to May this year.

Malao said barangay officials, who immediately sought the help of the police and the Army’s 6th Infantry Battalion after learning of his real background, first noticed Tukan’s presence in a roadside village here about a week ago.

Tukan is a known henchman of Sultan, a guerrilla bomb expert who trained in the handling of explosives and fabrication of improvised explosive devices in Kandahar, Afganistan, during the 1990s.

Sultan, tagged as the mastermind in the Kidapawan bus terminal bombing, was a cellmate of Tukan at the North Cotabato provincial jail.

Sultan is now reportedly holding out in a known lair of Islamic militants at the Liguasan Marsh, a 220,000-hectare delta at the tri-boundaries of North Cotabato, Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat.  – John Unson