Jemaah Islamiyah wants Muslim region in Asean

The Rizal Day bombings that killed 21 people on Dec. 30, 2000 were actually part of an ambitious scheme hatched by the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to establish a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia.

According to Camp Crame sources, JI — three of whose supposed members were arrested recently — aims to establish a unified fundamentalist Islamic state in Southeast Asia.

The pan-Islamic state would include all of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Mindanao.

Recent military and police operations resulted in the capture of Indonesian national Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi in January and his compatriots Agus Dwikarna, Tamsil Linrung, an official of an Indonesian political party, and Abdul Jamal Balfas.

Government lawyers claimed the three were members of the JI sent to the Philippines to stage terror attacks in support of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which is holding peace talks with the government.

Camp Crame sources said the plot to establish a pan- Islamic state was supposedly uncovered by US authorities after they captured a JI fighter in Afghanistan.

Information extracted from the unidentified JI fighter supposedly led to the arrest of 15 JI fighters who were planning to bomb a US ship and other facilities in Singapore.

The arrests in Singapore forced Al-Ghozi to flee to the Philippines where he was arrested on Jan. 15. His arrest led to the seizure of a ton of explosives inside a leased compound in General Santos City in South Cotabato.

Al-Ghozi later confessed to police that he was a member of the JI and was on a mission to stage bombings in the country, including the Rizal Day bombings in 2000.

As police uncovered al-Ghozi’s involvement in the Rizal Day bombings, joint military and police operations again resulted in the arrest of Agus, Tamsil and Balfas at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on March 13.

The three were charged with illegal possession of explosives and violation of the country’s immigration laws, but they claimed that the explosives caught in their possession were planted by police.

The Philippine National Police (PNP), however, denied the counter-charges and claimed the Indonesians were merely trying to debunk the charges against them.

Tamsil, who turned out to be a former treasurer of Indonesia’s National Mandate Party, made the charge in an interview with Indon daily Koran Tempo .

The three are detained along with al-Ghozi in a heavily secured cell at Camp Crame in Quezon City.