Another foreign-trained bomber bolts North Cotabato jail

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Another foreign-trained bomber bolted the North Cotabato provincial jail before dawn yesterday, the sixth bombing suspect to have escaped since 2007.

Investigators said Muhalidin Hassan, together with his two cellmates, Salahudin Limpangan and Khadafy Sagandingan, who are charged with kidnapping and car theft, respectively, “mysteriously” disappeared from his cell at the maximum security section of the provincial jail in Kidapawan City.

Hassan, who got training in fabricating improvised explosive devices in Kandahar, Afganistan and Peshawar, Pakistan, was arrested last year in connection with the 2007 bombing of a shopping mall in Kidapawan City.

He was also implicated in bombing attacks on buses plying the national highways in Central Mindanao last year.

Acting provincial jail warden Red Marasigan said they were still investigating how Hassan and his two cellmates escaped.

On Feb.3, 2007, Moro guerrillas rescued from the provincial jail another bombing suspect, Datu Ali Sultan, who also underwent training in the handling of improvised explosives in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, and his three cohorts.

More than 40 other inmates also managed to escape along with Sultan and his cohorts when more than 50 Moro rebels, armed with assault rifles and B-40 anti-tank rockets, barged into the provincial jail and demobilized the jail guards.

One of the armed men who rescued Sultan, Musali Cado, was arrested in Sultan Kudarat early this year in connection with the bombings in Kidapawan and surrounding towns last year.

Cado, who admitted being a foreign-trained bomb expert, also mysteriously disappeared last Jan. 5 from the Kidapawan City jail, less than a week after his arrest.

North Cotabato Gov. Jesus Sacdalan has ordered an extensive probe on the escape of Hassan and Cado, fearing that they could pull off more bombing attacks in the province.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, civil-military relations chief of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said their commander, Gen. Fred Cayton, has fielded dozens of plainclothes operatives in North Cotabato to track down Hassan and Cado.