4 arrested bombing suspects mere fall guys?

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — Two of the suspected bombers arrested by police last weekend are ordinary crab traders while the other two were nabbed just for exchanging jokes about the triple bombings in Central Mindanao last Jan. 10.

Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, chairman of the city peace and order council, said he has asked the police to dig deeper into the backgrounds of the four suspects, worried that they might be fall guys.

Sema, as secretary-general of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), has been cautious in implicating Moro residents in "acts of terror" to prevent what he calls "abrasions" it could cause to the cordiality of the ongoing peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Police arrested the four suspects — Mike Dalama, Andy Kalid, Norodin Salik, and Ismael Abo — at a traditional Moro eatery near the City Arcade, a centuries-old trading center where Muslim folk while away their time and enjoy cheap native coffee and delicacies.

Sema said two of the suspects are, in fact, known to him as frequenting the villages surrounding his fishpond in a coastal district here where they buy crabs that they sell in the market.

"I do not intend to criticize the city police. I am even congratulating the policemen who arrested the four suspects. What I want though is for all of us to look deeper into the (backgrounds) of the people we believe are involved in these acts of terror," he said.

While his administration has an iron-fisted policy against terrorism, Sema said he is careful in addressing security problems due to the city’s unique socio-cultural and religious intricacies.

The city government, according to Sema, is initiating contacts with the MILF to gather the backgrounds of the four suspects now locked up at police Precinct 1.

Two of the four suspects, Dalama and Kalid, are bona fide members of the MILF.

Von Al-Haq, chairman of the MILF’s Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities, has asked his government counterpart, Brig. Gen. Edgardo Gurrea, to investigate the arrest of the alleged bombers.

The controversy on the detention of the four suspects arose when the police ignored a challenge by the local media to present in public the bombing materials it had allegedly seized from the suspects.

Sources in the city police said the four were collared on a tip from an "asset" that they were talking about the series of bombings that rocked the cities of General Santos, Kidapawan and Cotabato last Jan. 10.

"One of them was overheard to have said they need not stay long in the coffee shop because there could be another bombing and they might get hurt," Sema said.

Inspector Wally Kasuyo, spokesman of the city police, said they have presented to the city prosecutor’s office the "evidence" seized from the suspects.