2 Alonto ‘henchmen’ linked to Dole plantation bombing

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — Authorities have tagged two alleged henchmen of Pentagon kidnap gang leader Tahir Alonto as behind Thursday’s attack on the pineapple plantation of American-owned Dole Phils. in Polomolok, South Cotabato.

Maj. Julieto Ando, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the police have invited the two — Jimmy Latimban and Fred Imbah — for questioning after witnesses claimed to have seen them, along with other men, strapping an improvised explosive on a water pipeline in a secluded area of the12,000-hectare Dole plantation at the foot of Mt. Matutum in Polomolok.

"These two (men) are known loyal followers of Tahir Alonto," Ando said, citing feedback from Army intelligence units in the South Cotabato-Sarangani-General Santos City (Socsargen) area.

Senior Superintendent Romeo Rufino, South Cotabato police director, insisted though that they still have no suspects in the bombing.

"But we are now starting to gather information and picking up evidence if the incident (also) had something to do with the land dispute between a tribal group and Dole Phils," he said.

A group of B’laan natives earlier had claimed that 2,789 hectares of the Dole plantation were part of their ancestral domain and a civil reservation site declared by the late President Carlos Garcia.

Military officials downplayed the attack as an "isolated’ incident and not part of a terror plot.

"It was an isolated case since the explosion took place far from the cannery of Dole Phils.," said Col. Nestor Ochoa, deputy commander of the 601st Infantry Brigade.

Ando said their intelligence operatives are convinced that the bombing of Dole’s water pipeline was meant to force the transnational firm to shell out "protection money."

The Pentagon’s notorious extortion rings — the Dragon Group, the Suicide Bombers Team and Urban Lions Squad — have claimed responsibility for recent explosions in commercial establishments in Central Mindanao, including the Oct. 10 bombing of a bus terminal in Kidapawan City that left seven people dead and 24 others, mostly innocent bystanders, injured.

Two Pentagon members were killed last January in a bungled attempt to kidnap one of the key American executives of Dole, which has been operating vast pineapple farms in South Cotabato since the early 1960s.

Dole, now also engaged in large-scale vegetable propagation, has been providing jobs to Filipino workers and generating huge revenues for Polomolok town.

Meanwhile, plainclothes operatives of the Army’s 301st Infantry Brigade and the Military Intelligence Group 12 caught red-handed yesterday another follower of Alonto while he was mulcting money from a prominent lawyer and his physician-spouse in Tantangan, South Cotabato, bolstering suspicions that the Pentagon could, indeed, be responsible for the Dole bombing.

Ando said soldiers nabbed Sonny Saban while receiving marked money from lawyer Vienvenido Eugenio and his wife.

"It was just fortunate that his would-be victims were courageous enough to help the military pin him down," he said.