If the Abu Sayyaf blew up the SuperFerry, its terrorist attack was worse than Madrid bombing

TIME magazine said so in its issue which came out yesterday. The article by its correspondent Simon Elegant – datelined Maguindanao Province – rated the front page blurb in the newsweekly’s August 30 issue: "ABU SAYYAF’S MURDEROUS WAYS."

The four-page main story on page 10, headlined The Return of the Abu Sayyaf declared in its subtitle: A Philippine group that was once known for brutal kidnapping has graduated to genuine terror.

Why not? Remember, the ASG was the first Moro insurgent (bandit) gang chosen for development by al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden. In his book, The New Jackals, Simon Reeve as early as 1999 – long before 9/11 – had written, in his chapter on The Bojinka Plot, that "Bin Laden had asked (Ramzi) Yousef to train men from Abu Sayyaf in the use of sophisticated high explosives. He spent several weeks on Basilan travelling into the remote, hilly interior of the island to witness small arms training, and taught his extraordinary bomb-making skills to more than 20 Abu Sayyaf terrorists in safehouses in and around Isabela, the provincial capital." (This was on page 72.)

If you’ll recall, Youssef was the first guy who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in New York, but failed, contrived a plan to assassinate the Pope on the latter’s visit to Manila, owned the computer in which the hijacking of commercial aircraft was diagrammed, even a plan for a bomb-laden airplane to hit the Pentagon. These eerily foretold the 9/11 terror attacks.

So there you are. Ramzi Yousef, on Bin Laden’s bidding (to help his pal, the late Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, as fellow jihadi in Afghanistan – older brother of the present ASG chieftain, Khadaffi Janjalani) went to Basilan to give the ASG boys bomb-training. This is in the book, too, on pages 136-137.

Do the Abu Sayyaf terrorists have bomb expertise? You bet they do.

It all seems to fit in, doesn’t it?

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Here’s how Elegant tells it in his TIME magazine article – although our front-page story will give you more details: "The unassuming young man who bought a ticket for Berth 51 on the 1,747-passenger SuperFerry 14 sailing from Manila to Bacolod and Davao on February 26 called himself Arnulfo Alvarado. If security officials in the Philippines checked ferry-passengers lists – they don’t – the name would have set off deafening alarm bells. Arnulfo Alvarado, say Philippine officials, was the name of a member, now dead, of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group. Two other Abu Sayyaf operators have used Alvarado’s name to carry out previous attacks, according to Philippine intelligence officers. This Alvarado, whose real name was Redondo Cain Dellosa, hauled on board a cardboard box containing a television set. The TV, according to investigators, was packed with 3.6 kg of TNT. Making his way to the cheapest passenger section in the bowels of the ship, Dellosa carefully placed the box on his seat and slipped away just before the ferry cast off. An hour after its 11 p.m. sailing, just off Corregidor Island, an explosion tore through SuperFerry 14, starting a fire that engulfed the ship and killed a hundred or more passengers (some likely victims are still unaccounted for and may be missing). According to investigators, Dellosa, who was apprehended four weeks later, confessed that the explosion was triggered by a timing device and that he chose the cheap seats to maximize panic and loss of life.

"Responsibility for the attack was immediately claimed by representatives of Abu Sayyaf, a group of Islamic separatists chiefly known for kidnapping for ransom in the southern Philippines. But just as rapidly, officials in Manila scoffed off the claim; President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo dismissed it as coming from "pranksters". Despite promises of a swift investigation into the attack, concrete conclusions about the cause of the explosion have yet to appear."

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The government and our military have, from the start, been pooh-poohing the Abu’s claim that they were the ones who destroyed Superferry 14, killing more than a hundred passengers (they’re still bringing the corpses from the scattered wreckage and the deep).

By golly, I was in Madrid on the very morning Islamic terrorists blew up those train coaches approaching the Madrid El Atocha station, and other trains in two substations, using Goma-Dos explosives (activated by mobile-phones), killing 196 hapless commuters and terribly wounding over 1,000. All Spain was horrified, and the subsequent attempt at cover-up – attempting to blame the Basque ETA terrorists – caused the fall of the Aznar government in the immediately-following elections. It was a period of national trauma and mourning, combining anger and grief.

Having been witness to the televised nationwide demonstrations, and personally covering the massive one in which almost 80 percent of the Madrileños turned out to protest, led by the Royal family, despite a driving rain, I’m amazed at the calm, almost bordering on indifference, with which our public dismissed the SuperFerry tragedy as one of those "accidents" of which we have had so many, including the biggest peacetime disaster in maritime history, the MV Doña Paz sinking in which 4,000 perished.

Although more died in Madrid, the very idea of more than 100 helpless and innocent ship passengers perishing, and an entire SuperFerry blasted by terrorists and sunk is more enormous than the Madrid atrocity which shocked all of Europe, and in concentric circles of lessening pain, the rest of the planet.

"That’s about to change," journalist Elegant asserts. "Officials in Manila say the final results of the forensic investigation should be released within weeks."

He quotes outgoing National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales (now GMA’s "chief of staff") as saying ". . . it will be difficult for investigators to prove 100 percent it was the Abu Sayyaf. But the overwhelming evidence points that way, and I’m certain they were the ones behind the attack."

"They are by far the most dangerous group in the country today," Gonzales adds.

Concludes elegant: "Thus, the SuperFerry 14 bombing will go into the rolls a the world’s fourth deadliest terrorist strike since Sept. 11, 2001, and Asia’s worst since the Bali Bombings of October 2002."

Gee whiz. There goes our slap-happy attitude towards terrorism – and sanamagan, although this is least of our priorities (ugh), there goes tourism.

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There’s a fascinating sidebar, too, with appropriate photo of the MILF chief in neat safari suit – and cellphone – backed up by a bunch of tough-looking bodyguards in jungle camouflage uniforms and the usual automatic weapons, entitled "Murad of the MILF: Mindanao’s Biggest Boss."

Elegant and TIME’s Bureau Chief here, Nelly Sindayen (my favorite Taosug "princess"), describe the guerrilla chieftain colorfully: "Sipping homegrown coffee in the shade of a huge acacia tree in a breezy jungle clearing, Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim wears a neatly pressed safari suit, his PDA and shiny leather briefcase close at hand. Murad, who’s in his late 50s, resembles a thriving smalltown businessman rather than a guerrilla leader. But there’s no doubt about his authority over the 100 uniformed and heavily armed fighters who escorted the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chairman during an exclusive interview with TIME in Maguindanao province last week, his first since becoming the group’s leader a year ago following the death of its founder, Hashim Salamat. Several dozen soldiers stand for nearly an hour with parade-ground stiffness until Murad gives a casual wave and a murmured command. The entire assembly immediately slumps to the ground with relief.

"Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo wants the MILF at ease permanently. She has spent the past three-and-a-half years trying to get a peace accord with the group, going so far as to persuade Washington to keep the MILF off its list of terrorist organizations. Murad is now the man her government must deal with, and he says he’s ‘hopeful but not too optimistic.’ He wants the government to adopt ‘a new formula’ that will break the cycle of failed negotiations and mutual distrust between the two sides."

I still suspect too many major commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front are in cahoots with the Jemaah Islamiyah, who has been training international terrorists in camps in Central Mindanao. But what the heck. Let’s see where those peace talks go.

But let me, as I’ve said often enough before, reiterate my position: As long as there are armed cadres, or guerrillas in Mindanao, there can be no peace. Only our police and our military must have the right to bear arms – and be sworn to defend and protect everybody. Nobody else can play. That’s when we’ll have peace in Mindanao.

It’s all or nothing. A peace treaty with the leaders of the MILF will mean nothing until and unless every MILF cadre is disarmed, and returns to the fold of peace.