A moneychanger suspected of ties to an al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terror group was arrested Saturday in the southern Philippines, officials said. Cotabato Vice Mayor Japal Guiani Jr. said the moneychanger, Jordan Abdulah, was identified as the owner of a house allegedly used as a hideout by suspected members of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group. Police and soldiers raided the house last October. No one was arrested, but authorities found chemical explosive residues and manuals on bioterrorism, assembling rocket-propelled grenades and jungle survival.
An officer from the local branch of the National Bureau of Investigation said members of the newly formed anti-terror task force arrested Abdulah. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said one of Abdulah's biggest clients as a money changer was Taufic Rifqui, an alleged Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah member arrested in Cotabato last year. Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita, head of the anti-terror task force, said he had not been informed about the arrest.
| "Nobody tells me anything!" |
Employees of the El Corazon coffee shop where Abdulah was nabbed called it an abduction, said Cotabato police Senior Inspector Abdulwahid Pedtucasan. They said he was handcuffed and dragged to a waiting car by four men in civilian clothes. |