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| Southeast Asia |
| Filippino prisoners confirm stories of terror training camps in Mindanao |
| 2005-10-31 |
| THE SEVEN-MONTH trial of the accused in the Valentine's Day bombings in Makati City provided a window into the inner workings of the regional terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah and its local affiliate, the Abu Sayyaf, in Mindanao. Their testimonies confirmed findings by the intelligence community that the Abu Sayyaf had found sanctuary on Mt. Cararao (spelled Kararao locally) in Lanao del Sur province and that Indonesian JI members had been conducting trainings in the handling of weapons and explosives and in the laying of land mines. The terrorists had eluded pursuing soldiers by keeping their numbers low, and by moving all the time. The testimonies also confirmed that the JI had been using Mindanao primarily as a training base, with the ASG providing the foot soldiers. Intelligence officials described Indonesia as the terror group's "war front" and Singapore and Malaysia, its "financial center." Indoctrination was a key element in that training, according to Gappal Bannah Asali, alias "Boy Negro," the Abu Sayyaf member who escaped trial by turning state witness against his three cohorts -- Gamal Baharan, Angelo Trinidad and Indonesian Rohmat Abdurrohim. The three were sentenced on Friday to die by lethal injection. Makati Judge Marissa Macaraig-Guillen had found the three accused guilty of carrying out the bombing of a bus in Makati in February that killed four people and wounded at least 60 others. Trinidad and Baharan, who allegedly placed the bomb in the bus, pleaded guilty. Only Rohmat pleaded not guilty. Asali said he and his colleagues "were indoctrinated on the missions that they would be undertaking." "These missions (bombings) were supposed to take place in order to show the people in Metro Manila the anger of the Muslims against Christians because of the many acts of violence and oppression perpetrated by Christian soldiers against the Muslims," he told the court. These acts of oppression, Asali said, included the "raping of Muslim women and killing of Muslim men who were defenseless and had not committed any wrong against the Christians." During training, recruits were required to wear "desert storm brown colored camouflage outfits." They were fully armed, he said. For their "graduation exercise," trainees were tasked with ambushing soldiers, which they did in Jolo town in Sulu province sometime in 2004, Asali said. Cararao is said to be under the operational control of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest secessionist group in Mindanao. The rebel group, however, has repeatedly denied the existence of any training camp for terrorists in the area. In a confidential report in September 2004, the government said the MILF had been hosting terror training camps for militant groups from Indonesia and Malaysia for at least seven years. The training camp on Cararao was reportedly set up following the fall of Camp Abubakar during a July 2000 military offensive. Rohmat had told the court that he taught martial arts to a small group of armed men in Cararao for 10 months starting in 2003, for which he was paid P100,000. He had entered the country illegally months before. He insisted, however, that it was only months later that he found out that the 15 or so people at the camp were members of the Abu Sayyaf. In the jungle, the group was also known as "Alharo Cator Islamiyah." Rohmat maintained that he came to the Philippines to teach Islam and kung fu, and not bomb-making -- a defense the court found unbelievable. During the first four months of the training, Rohmat said he physically suffered because the group was "very mobile and [traveled] from one place to another" to elude Philippine troops hunting them. The military had tagged Rohmat, alias Zacky, as a top JI associate sent to the Philippines to train bombers. Members of the cell that carried out the Valentine's Day bombing were among Rohmat's students. Asali said Rohmat personally trained him and two other persons in bomb-making techniques. That training lasted one month and two weeks. During the time that he spent in Cararao, Asali said he saw Abu Sayyaf leaders Khadaffy Janjalani and Abu Solaiman, as well as Baharan and Trinidad. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |