4 suspected terrorists with al-Qaeda links in RP custody

The intelligence community confirmed yesterday it has in its custody four suspected leaders or members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network operating in Southeast Asia.

The four were identified as Palestinians Mohammad Sabri Selamah Abusweirah, 36, and Ahamad Abd bin Masrie, 32; and Jordanians Hassan al Dden Hasan Ali, 36, and Hadi Yousef Alghoul.

The four were arrested in November last year during separate raids conducted by combined teams of intelligence agents of the Philippine National Police and the Bureau of Immigration Anti-Terrorist Strike Force in their safe houses in Mindanao and Manila.

Recovered from them were explosive materials, blasting caps, maps of their targets, guns and ammunition. But in the absence of an anti-terrorist law in the country, the four Middle East nationals were only charged in court with illegal possession of explosives and firearms, timer clocks, immigration stamps, and Iraqi consular stamps.

According to the information supplied by the anti-terrorist strike force, Abusweirah, a 1991 engineering graduate of the Mindanao State University, was assigned as head of the WML-IIRO (World Muslim League-International Islamic Relief Organization) for Western Mindanao. WML-IIRO was headed by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law Mohammad Jamal Khalifa.

It was during his assignment in Mindanao that Rhamzi Amad Yousef, who plotted the assassination of Pope John Paul II in Manila, made two visits to the Abu Sayyaf camp in Basilan. The meeting was arranged by Khalifa’s WML-IIRO.

Ali admitted during interrogation that he knew Yousef as both of them had been classmates in high school at the al-Khindi College in Kuwait. Also taken from his possession were names belonging to a group believed to be operating a "call syndicate" which was engaged in illegally tapping private telephone lines for a teleconference between a caller in the Philippines and another party abroad.

Masrie, who was arrested in Parañaque City, was staying with known international terrorists in a boarding house. These were identified as Hassan al-Hind, Fuad Jardan, Khalid Hassan, Fhad Aoud, Ahmad Abed Masrie and Mustafa Farah.

Masrie’s friend identified as Khalil Hussein and his cousin Khalid Hassan were involved in the mid-air bombing of a Philippine Airlines flight from Cebu to Japan, which also involved Rhamzi Yousef and Abdul Murad.

Yousef and Murad were later arrested and convicted in the United States for the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.

Alghoul, when arrested in Cupang, Balanga, Bataan, was found in possession of dynamite explosives, a cellphone bomb and voluminous documents on terrorist activities.