Engineer tagged as bomb scare brains

Police investigators are hot on the trail of the man believed responsible for the bomb scares in Metro Manila and two cities in Min-danao last month, Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Leandro Mendoza said yesterday.

Mendoza identified the suspect as Rogelio Adamat, a 41-year-old engineer from Cotabato City who allegedly has links to separatist and communist rebels in Min-danao.

Adamat is supposedly a Tiruray tribesman who has a police record for holding hostage a passerby at Plaza Lawton in Manila several years ago, Mendoza said.

Although Adamat had earlier voiced his federalist beliefs, Mendoza said police are still trying to verify the suspect’s true motives in allegedly planting at least 13 dud bombs in Metro Manila, General Santos City and Cotabato City last month.

Charges of illegal possession of explosives have been filed against Adamat and several other people, whom Mendoza declined to identify, before the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Mendoza said Adamat was identified through latent fingerprints Adamat left on the bombs and on the manifestos that accompanied the bombs.

The fingerprints matched the ones Adamat submitted to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) when he applied for a clearance for a trip to Saudi Arabia sometime in 1989.

Official records show that Adamat indeed travelled to Saudi Arabia in 1990 and to Malaysia and Pakistan in 1999.

Mendoza said police are still confirming Adamat’s supposed links with the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) but other Camp Crame sources said Adamat maintained close contact with communist rebels in Central Mindanao, particularly a certain Ike de los Reyes.

De los Reyes was a former ranking member of a splinter group of the the communist hit squad Alex Boncayao Brigade (ABB), which was then headed by slain labor leader Felimon "Popoy" Lagman.

De los Reyes later joined another group that broke away from the ABB, the Revolutionary Proletariat Army-Alex Boncayao Brigade (RPA-ABB) and subsequently emerged in Central Mindanao where he supposedly kept contact with Adamat’s group.