Four suspected bombers nabbed in North Cotabato

Four men, one of them a suspected Jemaah Islamiyah operative, were arrested in North Cotabato while trying to transport a powerful homemade bomb, military and police officials reported yesterday.

Kasan Datukon, 29, and the three other suspects were arrested Wednesday near Cotabato City when police and troops discovered the bomb on a passenger jeepney.

The bomb was made from a 60-millimeter mortar round rigged to a device that could be set off by cellular phone, said Maj. Gen. Agustin Demaala, commander of the Philippine Army’s 6th Infantry Division.

Datukon initially sat at the front of the bus but later offered his seat to an elderly man, in the process leaving behind the package.

The suspect transferred to the roof of the vehicle with other passengers, a practice common in remote areas where transportation is difficult. The jeepney was stopped at a military checkpoint for routine inspection in Pigcawayan town where troops found the package containing the bomb.

The driver immediately pointed to Datukon as the owner. Datukon was arrested along with three other men believed to be traveling with him. The device was rigged to explode with a call from another cell phone carried by Datukon, Pigcawayan police chief Senior Inspector Raulito Soyum said.

"The explosive is very sophisticated. This is the reason why we are now gathering more information on the possibility that the suspect has links with a much bigger terrorist organization," he said.

Demaala said Datukon was believed to be a member of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamic militant group blamed for the October 2002 bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali in which over 200 people were killed.

Datukon is also suspected of being a member or a recruit of the al-Qaeda-linked Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group and trained in bomb-making by Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian-based terror group also active in the southern Philippines.

Demaala said the bomb was similar to other improvised explosive devices discovered or set off in several southern cities, and traced to the Abu Sayyaf.

The three other suspects were also being interrogated and investigated for possible links to militant groups, Demaala said.

He did not give further details, but military intelligence officials earlier told AFP that two Jemaah Islamiyah bomb experts, Omar Patek and Dulmatin, were believed to be training local militants on the southern Mindanao island.

The pair are being sought by Indonesian police in connection with the Bali bombings.

Another Jemaah Islamiyah bomber, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, was killed near Cotabato months after he walked out of a high-security prison cell in Camp Crame in July 2003, embarrassing the Philippine government.

Jemaah Islamiyah is also believed to have forged links with the Abu Sayyaf, the Philippines’ most violent Muslim militant group which has been blamed for a spate of bombings and high-profile kidnappings.

The military has been conducting a massive manhunt for Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khaddafy Janjalani in the south. — With Roel Pareño, Ramil Bajo, Jaime Laude, AFP, AP