DFA verifying info about Pinoy studes in Pakistan

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is verifying information that some 200 Filipino Muslim students in Pakistan are being trained by extremist and terrorist groups there with links to Osama bin Laden.

This developed as the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) revealed that the contracts of 59 people from Cotabato to work for bin Laden’s group of companies have been held in abeyance since August to prevent them from being possibly used for terrorist actions.

Vice President and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teofisto Guingona Jr. said the Philippine Embassy in Islamabad has begun checking the status of Filipino students who are enrolled in religious schools there.

The students, he said, have not been keeping in touch with embassy officials.

These disclosures were made during a Senate hearing on the status of overseas Filipino workers, specifically in the Middle East and Pakistan, a neighbor of Afghanistan, which is now the subject of US military strikes following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington last Sept. 11. — Aurea Calica