Four Indons tied to al-Qaeda fall

Security forces have arrested four Indonesian men in anti-terrorist sweeps in General Santos City, the military said yesterday.

The suspects, Uskar Makawata, Jaka Antanari, Julkiri Lentembuba and Rahman Yanis, arrived in the city on July 22 and were rounded up in police-military raids on Saturday, said Brig. Gen. Generoso Senga, head of an Army infantry division in the area.

"We were targeting a group of foreign nationals suspected to be" involved in terrorist activities, Senga told reporters by telephone from his base in Cotabato City.

The authorities secured arrest warrants from a lower court "for violation of Presidential Decree 1866," Senga said, referring to a law against unlicensed firearms and ammunition.

The military report said guns and bullets were seized from one house and "subversive" documents from the house of Makawata, 40, who is being linked to a mall bombing in General Santos last April.

"We were wondering why they are in the area, and it’s a concern," Senga said.

At least three of the suspects are "natives of Utara, North Sulawesi" and none of them had proper travel documents, he said.

Central Mindanao police director Chief Superintendent Jose Dalumpines and Senior Superintendent George Aquisap, General Santos City police chief, said they are investigating if Makawata has any connection with the Jemaah Islamiyah, a hardline Islamic organization with links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Aquisap said Bashid Usman, one of the suspects arrested in the Fitmart mall bombing last April 21, identified Makawata as one of the planners of the attack that killed 14 and wounded 60.

He said Usman positively identified Makawata when he saw him at police headquarters in General Santos City.

"However, Usman did not clarify if Makawata was involved in the execution of the bombing," Aquisap said.

A military report issued earlier in Manila mistakenly reported that three Malaysians were arrested.

The Indonesians insisted they were just in the country as laborers, Senga told AFP earlier Tuesday.

Police authorities said Makawata and the three other Indonesian nationals were arrested when agents of the Bureau of Immigration arrived in the city to look for them after being tipped off that they were illegal aliens.

Armed with a search warrant from municipal trial court Judge Oscar Noel Jr., several teams of policemen and BI agents swooped down on an urban poor community in the city, and arrested Makawata inside a small house in Barangay Tambler.

The three other Indonesians were arrested in a separate house owned by a certain Hassim Sumagkay in Barangay Fatima in the same city.

Aquisap clarified the three Indonesians have no connection with Makawata, who is also being suspected of facilitating the training of foreigners in camps of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Philippine authorities have said General Santos was the suspected base of a cell of the Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Southeast Asian Islamic group that has been outlawed in Malaysia and Singapore and which also allegedly operates in Indonesia.

The arrests followed an announcement in Singapore on Monday that the authorities have detained 21 terror suspects, including 19 with suspected ties to Jemaah Islamiyah and two who allegedly trained at a Muslim rebel base in the southern Philippines.

Two Indonesian men have been jailed in the Philippines on explosives charges. One of them, Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, was accused of having links with a number of Filipinos arrested in General Santos City in connection with the Fitmart bombing.

Authorities are also looking into reports that the four newly arrested Indonesians are allies of al-Ghozi.

No training for aliens

The Philippines’ largest Muslim separatist force on Tuesday denied having links with the Singapore detainees.

Muslim "scholars and brothers" from the Middle East, Asia and Europe have visited or been invited into the MILF Camp Abubakar on Mindanao island in the past, but were never allowed to join military training, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said.

"We never barred them from visiting us, but we never trained them militarily. We were very open to them between 1996 and 1998," Kabalu told AFP by telephone.

Only Filipino Muslim fighters were trained in the camp, he said. The Philippine military captured Abubakar in 2000.

Kabalu said the MILF, while sympathizing with Muslim separatist causes in the region, did not have direct links with Jemaah Islamiyah, allegedly led by Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Baasyir.

"The MILF does not have a connection with the Jemaah Islamiyah, but authorities are trying to link us to them partly to scuttle the peace talks and to show support to the US government especially after the September 11 anniversary," Kabalu said.

"If there is a threat to US embassies it will not come from the MILF. If there is a threat, it could be because of their (US government’s) war with some groups," Kabalu said without elaborating.

He said the MILF was focused in trying to resolve the decades-long insurgency in the southern Philippines, where his group has been fighting for an independent Islamic state.

The group has already signed a truce with Manila amid peace negotiations.

Governments in the region have said the Jemaah Islamiyah was directly linked to the al-Qaeda terror network of Saudi-dissident Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Security authorities have been on high alert following reported threats of attacks from Islamic terrorists targeting US embassies across Southeast Asia. – AFP, Jaime Laude, John Paul Jubelag, Roel Pareño, Paolo Romero