Testifying before an independent team investigating the series of deadly explosions in Mindanao last year, Moro rebel chairman Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim denied Monday his groupâs participation in the attacks and pointed to a âthird forceâ as responsible for the deadly incidents. Speaking by telephone to an independent multisectoral Mindanao Truth Commission, Murad also again dismissed allegations that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has ties with the regional terrorist group Jemaaah Islamiyah. He also claimed that a group has been working hard so that the MILF would be included on the United States list of terrorist groups. âI would like to repeat the statement of our late chairman Hashim Salamat that we have no ties with any terrorist groups in the country or abroad,â Murad said. âIn behalf of the entire MILF, I am again denying accusations that weâre behind the series of deadly explosions in Mindanao last year,â he added. According to Murad, the MILF has a standing policy ânot to resort to terrorist activities in advancing its cause.â
Following the deadly Davao airport blast last year, authorities filed charges of multiple murder and multiple frustrated murder against top MILF leaders, headed by the late chairman Salamat; Murad, then the groupâs vice chairman for military affairs; Ghazali Jaafar, vice chairman for political affairs, spokesman Eid Kabalu and some others. Murad also denied that the alleged suicide bomber in the airport blast, Montasir Sudang, was a member of the MILF, a claim made by the military. He stressed that a third force, which he did not name, is allegedly working hard to link the MILF to Jemaaah, the supposed Southeast Asian cell of Osama bin Ladenâs al-Qaeda terrorist group.
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Murad told the commission that the allegations that Salamat and Jemaaah leaders have reached an agreement to help the Moro group advance its cause in exchange for accommodating Jemaaah members in MILF camps are just fabrications to malign the rebel group. âI have been with chairman Salamat until his death and we donât know who the leaders of Jemaaah are until the September 11 attack in the United States,â he stressed.
Last year disgruntled junior military officers who carried out a foiled mutiny at Oakwood Premier apartments in Makati City blamed the series of explosions to the government. The names of then-defense chief Angelo Reyes and then-army intelligence chief Victor Corpus also came out as the alleged architects in the bomb attacks in Mindanao. They, however, denied that the State was behind the terrorist activities that year, putting the blame instead on the MILF. |