4 of 18 hijackers visited RP; Bin Laden expanding network

Four terrorists who took part in the Sept. 11 attack on New York City and the Pentagon visited Manila for 21 days late last year and early this year, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) said yesterday.

Immigration Commissioner Andrea Domingo said Saudi Arabians Ahmed Fayez, Ahmed al Ghamdi, Saed al Ghamdi and Abdulaziz al Omari were allowed to enter the country without a visa, based on immigration records at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes said Al Qaida, an international terrorist group under Osama bin Laden, is expanding its network in Mindanao in preparation for a massive US-led attack against terrorist lairs worldwide.

"What we’re saying is that the connection was particularly strong (in the early 1990s) but has weakened a little after the arrest of some of their members here in 1995," Reyes said. "Now, there are still efforts to maintain these links."

Military officials have linked the Abu Sayyaf with Al Qaida, saying that Abu Sayyaf founder Abdurajak Janjalani had studied and underwent combat training in Afghanistan under the auspices of Bin Laden.

At Malacañang, Saudi Arabian Labor and Social Affairs Minister Ali bin Ibrahim al Namia assured President Arroyo yesterday that overseas Filipino workers in the Kingdom are safe.

"We checked the 10 names against our list, and there were four hits," Domingo said. "This means people with these names visited the country. Some of them made a number of visits."

Immigration records showed Fayez and Al Omari each visited once in 2000, while both Al Ghamdis had made several trips to the country over the last two years.

Domingo said they would try to secure pictures of the suspects from US investigators to enable authorities to determine whether they were the same people who hijacked the three American commercial aircraft.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has identified the four as among the hijackers of the three commercial planes that were deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, she added.

Domingo said BI investigators are trying to retrieve the arrival and departure cards of the four Saudi Arabians to determine where they had been while they were in the country.

Embarkation and disembarkation cards could help investigators check the identities of other possible foreign terrorists and their local contacts, she added.

Domingo said the BI has started a background investigation on some 340 foreign students from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, who are enrolled in various colleges and universities nationwide, including 12 at the Philippine Aeronautics Training School (PATS) in Pasay City.

Immigration agents have also placed under surveillance 130 Pakistanis, 60 Bangladeshis, 60 Iranians, 54 Sudanese, 15 Saudi Arabians, 11 Turks, nine Kuwaitis, five Jordanians, six Afghans, an Egyptian, an Iraqi, and a Palestinian, she added.

In another development, Human Rights Commissioner Nasser Marohomsalic said the Islamic Relief Organization, which terrorist Bin Laden set up in Mindanao in 1980 through his brother-in-law Khalifah, has become a conduit of funds for extremist groups in the South.

"The name of Bin Laden is very popular in Mindanao," he said.

Marohomsalic said the Islamic Relief Organization was established to help Mindanao’s Muslim population.

Marohomsalic said Khalifah has been providing scholarship programs for Muslim youth, which includes the setting up of Islamic schools throughout Mindanao.

Marohomsalic described the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as "plain juramentado," which Muslim Filipinos unleashed against US troops in Mindanao at the start of the last century.

The hijackers of the killer planes committed the "highest form of juramentado" when they crashed the aircraft in centers of population, he added.

Marohomsalic said Jikiri, a well-known Muslim in his time, "practically killed all Caucasians in sight," including Dutch visitors in Sulu at the early part of American rule in Mindanao 100 years ago. — Rey Arquiza, Paolo Romero, Perseus Echeminada, Jess Diaz, Marichu Villanueva