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| Southeast Asia |
| Philippines on alert for JI sleeper cells in Luzon |
| 2005-02-16 |
| Soldiers positioned north of Metro Manila have been directed to anticipate the springing into action of covert Islamic extremists belonging to alleged "sleeper cells" of a shadowy terrorist group operating in the Luzon island. Lt. Col. Vic Castro, intelligence chief of the Armed Forces' Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom), revealed here on Tuesday before participants of the two-day seminar-workshop on the government's proposed National Internal Security Plan (NISP) that the military is now also on the lookout for "terrorist sleepers" aligned with the Jeemah Islamiya (JI). According to him, it has been three years now that the "sleepers" have been detected to be operating in the provinces of Tarlac, Pangasinan, Bulacan and Nueva Ecija, and that these purported "covert terrorists" have been using the "Balik-Islam" movement of the Filipino-Muslim community as a camouflage for their operations. Authorities have actually earlier tagged the alleged JI-allied "terrorist" group in Luzon as the so-called Hukbong Khalid Trinidad (HKT), believed to be the armed wing of the shadowy Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement (RSRM). Castro claimed that with the raging revolt in Sulu by a faction of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) loyal to jailed former Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Gov. Nur Misuari, it is likely that the RSRM-HKT would "leap into action and carry out terroristic activities." He added that as the renegade MNLF fighters have already established an alliance with Islamic extremists belonging to the Abu Sayyaf, it is probable that the RSRM-HKT will similarly take advantage of the Sulu revolt and launch "sympathy attacks" in Luzon. It was in Tarlac City when the shadowy Luzon-based terrorist group was first detected after police authorities engaged seven of its suspected members in a shootout in a transport terminal on May 1, 2002. The encounter then led to the killing of Khalid Amir Trinidad, a Muslim convert, after whom the HKT was named. At the time, Trinidad and his colleagues were allegedly planning to terrorize Tarlac City by lobbing grenades on commercial establishments. While the Valentine's Day explosions in the Mindanao cities of Davao and General Santos could be the handiwork of the MNLF-Misuari faction and the Abu Sayyaf, Castro said it was only the RSRM-HKT that has the capability to launch the Makati City bombing. Meanwhile, the underground Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has expressed skepticism if indeed the bombings in the cities of Davao, General Santos and Makati were undertaken by any of the country's Filipino-Muslim rebel groups. CPP senior spokesman, Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal, said that the Valentine's Day bombings "do not serve any democratic or pro-people cause. nor the Moro people's cause for self-determination." The communist spokesman added that, at the most, the terrorist bomb attacks "serve only to justify the intensification of fascist suppression and the employment of terror to preempt the burgeoning people's resistance against the Arroyo regime" and that these "also serve to justify the escalation of US military intervention and give credence to the so-called 'war against terror' of the imperialist US government." Rosal said that like in previous bombings, the recent acts of terrorism in the two key Mindanao cities and the country's financial district "can only be the handiwork of elements or agents that wittingly or unwittingly serve the cause of the militarists and US interventionists." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |