The May 21, 2000 bombing was allegedly a "dry-run" for the near simultaneous blasts on Dec. 30, 2000 that killed 22 people and injured more than 100, said Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) director Eduardo Matillano.
Dante Ambo, 37, and Danny Boisan, 32, were arrested in Maharlika Village, a Muslim-dominated community last Sunday. They were charged with murder and illegal possession of explosives, Matillano said.
Matillano said police recovered a grenade, two homemade bombs, detonating cords and blasting caps during the arrests.
Boisan told reporters when the suspects were presented to the media that Ustadz Nabil Panayaman, a commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) based in Manila paid him and Ambo P100,000 each to carry out the mall bombing. Panayaman, is still at large.
Police said the bombers were trained in explosives-handling at the MILF camp in Camp Abubakar in 1994 by a certain Solaiman, an Indonesian terrorist linked to JI bomber Fathur Rohman Al Ghozi.
The MILF has denied involvement in the May 21, 2000 explosion in a restroom of Cinema 6 of the SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City.
The explosion was the second that week, coming four days after a powerful blast at Glorietta in Makati City that injured 13 people.
Matillano alleged that the two men were accomplices of Al-Ghozi, a self-confessed member of the Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah who said he was involved in the December 2000 bombings.
Al-Ghozi was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to up to 12 years for illegally possessing explosives. He escaped from a maximum security prison last month before he was to be arraigned on murder charges for the Dec. 30, 2000 bombings.
Matillano said Boisan and Ambo taped the bomb components to their bodies and smuggled them into the mall’s movie theater, where they reassembled the explosive and slipped it into the restroom. The blast killed Ivan Columba, a janitor.
Police claimed the bomb used in the SM Megamall blast was made at Ambos’ house in Maharlika Village.
During interrogation, police said the suspects pointed to another suspect identified as Randy Boday.