Leaks blamed for failed raids

COTABATO CITY — Highly placed intelligence sources blamed "seeming leaks of operational plans" for the failed raids on suspected hideouts of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) elements here last Sunday.

Government agents were left empty-handed, finding the suspected JI lairs apparently rid of firearms and bomb-making materials.

Even key religious leaders in Central Mindanao said they are convinced that there could have been leaks by someone among the combined Army and police agents who carried out the raids, thus giving the JI members enough time to clean up their hideouts and elude arrest.

"A gray vehicle was seen being loaded with suspicious boxes and bags from one of the safehouses in the Campo Muslim area the night before it was searched by policemen and soldiers," one of the intelligence sources told The STAR, without elaborating.

Army intelligence sources also quoted their informants as saying that suspicious-looking men had left the three suspected JI safehouses in the adjoining Campo Muslim and Bagua areas here a day before government operatives swooped down on them.

Superintendent Felipe Napoles Jr., chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said last Sunday’s raids were carried out on the behest of the local Muslim religious community and as part of the government’s crackdown on foreign terrorists holding out in Central Mindanao.

"There was no intention to disrupt the observance of Ramadan by the people residing in the houses that we raided," Napoles said.