ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines – Authorities captured an al-Qaeda-linked bomber suspected in at least six attacks, including a 2002 karaoke bar explosion that killed an American Green Beret and a hotel blast that killed three people last weekend, officials said yesterday.
Police and military intelligence officers captured Hussein Ahaddin in a hideout of the Abu Sayyaf rebel force in Barangay Muti in this southern city late Tuesday.
Ahaddin, who uses the guerrilla name Abu Tiih, belonged to an urban-based group of Abu Sayyaf fighters behind bombings and extortion, Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. said.
Ochoa, who heads the government’s Anti-Terrorism Council, said authorities have panned out in search of Ahaddin’s companions hiding in this city.
“Our security troops are still conducting follow-up operations to arrest other members of the group who remain at large,” said Director Felicisimo Khu, chief of the Directorate for Integrated Police Operations in the region.
Ahaddin’s wife Harija denied that her husband was a member of the Abu Sayyaf or any terror group involved in the bombings.
“He is just a mere habal-habal (motorcycle) driver and has not been in hiding,” she told newsmen.
She said they would seek the help of the Commission on Human Rights, adding that her husband was arrested on similar charges in 2007 but was subsequently released.
The Abu Sayyaf was founded in Basilan in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a violent Muslim insurgency that has been raging for decades. US-backed Philippine offensives have weakened the group, which is blacklisted by Washington as a terrorist organization, but it remains a key security threat.
Ahaddin has been implicated in six attacks, the latest of which was a powerful blast that killed three people, wounded 27 others and destroyed the Atilano Pension House last Sunday near the city’s downtown area, Ochoa said.
Police suspected Abu Sayyaf militants detonated a bomb made from about 10 kilograms of ammonium nitrate and TNT powder, which ignited a fire and devastated the two-story building.
City Mayor Celso Lobregat said Ahaddin’s arrest was “a positive development. “We will not rest until all the people involved are placed behind bars and justice is served,” he said.
Ahaddin has been hunted for his alleged involvement in an Oct. 2, 2002 bombing that killed a US Green Beret counterterrorism trainer and two Filipino civilians in a karaoke bar outside an Army camp in the city’s Malagutay district. Twenty-five other people, including another US soldier, were wounded by the bomb that was hidden in a parked motorcycle, Ochoa said.
Senior Superintendent Edwin de Ocampo, Zamboanga City police chief, said Ahaddin has acknowledged involvement at least in the Malagutay bombing and nearly simultaneous explosions last month that wounded 11 people in a cockfighting arena and another budget hotel in Zamboanga City.
Ahaddin’s group bombed a lottery outlet and fruit stand in the city also last month, killing one and wounding six others, police said.
He and his group have also been blamed for nearly simultaneous bombings of two popular stores that killed seven people and wounded 150 others on Oct. 17, 2002 and the bombings of a parked passenger bus and a motorcycle that wounded 30 people in Zamboanga City.
The Abu Sayyaf has about 380 armed fighters and survives mostly on extortion and kidnappings for ransom. Al-Qaeda is believed to have provided funds and training to the group, which is notorious for deadly bombings, kidnappings and beheadings. – Roel Pareño, Cecille Suerte Felipe, AP