Jemaah leaders indicted for Rizal Day bombings

Asia’s most wanted man, Hambali, and seven other people were charged yesterday for the 2000 Rizal Day bombings that killed 22 people, one of the Philippines’ worst terrorist attacks.

Hambali, born Riduan Isamuddin, and Faiz Abubakar Bafana, two alleged leaders of the Jemaah Islamiyah group, were indicted along with fellow Indonesian Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi and five Filipino Muslim rebels by the Department of Justice before the Manila regional trial court, prosecutor Peter Ong said.

However, only al-Ghozi, who is serving time in a local jail, will go on trial as Bafana is detained in Singapore and Hambali and the others are at large.

Hambali and Bafana were indicted based on confessions by al-Ghozi and evidence that they had conspired in the plot to bomb blast the Light Railway Transit (LRT) in Blumentritt, Manila, a passenger bus in Cubao, Quezon City, the Plaza Ferguson across the US Embassy in Manila, an abandoned gasoline station along EDSA in Makati City and a warehouse at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Parañaque City on Dec. 30, 2000.

At least 22 people were killed and over a hundred others wounded in the five almost-simultaneous explosions.

The indictment charged that the bombings were staged as retaliation for the military’s capture of several camps of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Mindanao earlier that year.

Hambali and Bafana allegedly met with al-Ghozi, Filipino Muslim rebel bomb expert Saifullah "Mukhlis" Yunos, and several others in Manila a week before the attacks.

They were charged with plotting the bombing, having allegedly given Yunos P280,000 between November and December 2000 to finance the attack, the charge sheet said. — With reports from AFP, AP, Cecille Suerte Felipe