2 arrested for Kidapawan mall blast

COTABATO CITY – Police filed criminal charges yesterday against two suspects arrested in connection with Thursday’s bombing of a shopping mall in Kidapawan City.

The notorious Al-Khobar extortion gang, blamed for the recent spate of bombings of buses and commercial establishments in central Mindanao, claimed responsibility for the attack on the KMCC mall.

Senior Superintendent Lester Camba, Cotabato provincial police director, said Hassan Mahaliden Sulaik, 19, of Kidapawan City, and Alex Takulin Sanduyugan, 20, from Pikit, Cotabato province, have been detained and are awaiting prosecution.

Sulaik and Sanduyugan, believed to be members of the Al-Khobar gang, were identified by witnesses as the two men who left a bag containing the improvised explosive device at the mall’s baggage counter.

Witnesses said they saw the two suspects leaving the premises of the mall seconds before the bomb went off, killing KMCC employee Boyet Alfazer.

SOCCSKSARGEN police director Chief Superintendent Felizardo Serapio said policemen who raided the hideout of the suspects recovered a claim stub for the bag they left at the baggage counter of the mall.

Sulaik and Sanduyugan were arrested hours after the bombing with the help of witnesses, he added.

There are strong indications that the bomb used in the attack on the mall was fabricated at the hideout where the two suspects were arrested, Serapio said.

However, Sulaik told reporters he has a girlfriend working at the mall, and that he and Sanduyugan were there to fetch her.     – John Unson, Edith Regalado