Police probe link of 2 terror groups

Their targets, their causes, more so their nationalities show them to be from unrelated terrorist groups operating in the Philippines. But police have stumbled upon uncanny similarities in their modus operandi, and are thus looking into possible links somewhere.

The first group is composed of Muslim separatists from Sulu who allegedly staged the Rizal Day bombings in Metro Manila last Dec. 30. In custody are ten suspects arrested days before and weeks after four blasts killed two dozen commuters in a train in Blumentritt, four promenders in Plaza Ferguson in Ermita, two policemen in Makati, and a bus rider in Cubao. At first police theorized that the suspects had aimed to divert military attention to the capital and away from Sulu where Abu Sayyaf terrorists were then holding hostage a black American. Now they think there might be more to it than just a diversionary ploy.

The other group involves an American and a Swiss of Vietnamese descent, and an aging Japanese. Police arrested American Vo Van Duc, 41, Swiss Hyuh Tuan Ngok, and 62-year-old Makoto Ito of Japan in a raid in San Juan, Metro Manila, at dawn of Aug. 30. Initial interrogation revealed that the trio was planning to bomb the Vietnamese embassy in Manila on Sept. 2, Vietnam’s National Day. Documents taken from them showed that they’re members of the Government of Free Vietnam (GFV), composed of Vietnamese immigrants to the US and dedicated to toppling the communist regime in their homeland.

Police said they searched the trio’s townhouse on the strength of a court warrant. At first they found "improvised devices for making phone bombs, detonating cords, one bag of blasting caps, assorted cellular phones, and a 12-volt battery." They raided two other "safe houses used by the suspects." There they uncovered "up to 39 kilos of mobile telephone-activated, ammonium nitrate-based explosive devices hidden in eight water jugs" which the suspects had planned to plant outside the embassy.

Raiders turned the evidence over to bomb experts, who first noticed similarities with the Sulu group. The Rizal Day bombers used ammonium nitrate mixed with gasoline, like the truck bomb that razed a government building in Oklahoma in 1999. The readily available fertilizer mixture was obviously becoming the terrorists’ weapon of choice. The use of cellphones to activate the bombs was the innovation, though. Parts of cellphones were recovered from the train, the plaza and the Makati blasts. Investigators believe that the bus explosion was premature, and that the lone fatality must have tinkered with the cellphone.

There was a strange prelude to the Rizal Day bombings. Two days prior, NBI agents arrested three men from Sulu near Plaza Ferguson. They readily confessed they were there on a "bombing mission." Asked for whom and what, they said they were flown from Zamboanga earlier that week by operatives of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force. The story was published in The STAR on Dec. 30, but investigators gave no follow-ups to the unseemly statement. The Abu Sayyaf was said to have links with international terrorist Osama bin Laden through a brother-in-law who’s married to a Filipino from Zamboanga. But the PAOCTF? It was an elite unit of PNP, NBI and AFP officers under then-concurrent PNP chief Gen. Panfilo Lacson. The unit has since disbanded; Lacson has since become senator.

The three Suluanons were labelled as terrorists who desire Islamic separatism of Sulu and Basilan from the Philippines. They denied it, but admitted that they took the opportunity to fly to Manila to sell videotapes to media outfits of interviews with Abu Sayyaf hostage Jeffrey Schilling.

Weeks after the bombings, the NBI picked up seven more suspects from Muslim communities in Manila. They’re now charged with murder and illegal possession of bombs.

Nothing has since been said about the strange link to the PAOCTF – until a week ago. NBI Dir. Reynaldo Wycoco announced that they’re hot on the trail of a certain Jimmy Arinday, believed to be the "go-between of the bombers and the masterminds." He added that they’re trying to verify the identity of a certain Colonel Torres, to whom Arinday allegedly reports. Colonel Torres is already included by that name in the charge sheet, and prosecutors said he was a member of the defunct PAOCTF.

The NBI is closely working with the PNP-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group on new leads about the Vietnamese group. And it’s not only because the Interpol is asking for more info on Vo Van Duc, who reportedly had a hand in the bombing of the Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok last June and the London consulate last year. There was a fourth suspect arrested with the GFV members in San Juan, a Filipino woman initially identified in news reports as Florinda Valderama. She allegedly rented the three San Juan safe houses for the GFV, and the trucks used to move the explosive chemicals and devices from out hideout to another.

Investigators found out that Valderama was really Flory Estrada, a restaurateur who once served as operative of the dreaded MISG (Metrocom Intelligence and Security Group) during the Marcos years. Lacson had also served in the same unit, for which many arrested communist suspects had charged him with torturing them under martial law. Flory Estrada is listed in the case buildup of AFP intelligence chief Col. Victor Corpus on the PAOCTF’s alleged abuses and criminal rackets during the term of President Joseph Estrada. An entry under "Large-scale real estate fraud" states: "Ping Lacson and other PAOCTF officers engaged in large-scale real estate fraud in connivance with a senior LRA (Land Registration Authority) official during the Estrada presidency. A certain Flory Estrada, a former WAC assigned to the defunct MISG, serves primarily as administrator of real estate property acquired through fraudulent means by Ping Lacson, (Chief Supt.) Cesar Mancao and (Sr. Supt.) Michael Ray Aquino. Ping Lacson and Flory Estrada are silent business partners. Thousands of hectares belonging to Marcos cronies were manipulated to be transferred through dubious means to Flory Estrada, who was once a secretary of the deceased Rolando Abadilla."

In the raids on the GFV safe houses, police found duplicates of letters the trio had sent to Lacson. The senator has acknowledged receiving the originals, in which they asked him to support their cause. Flory estrada told police she rented the houses and trucks for the foreigners also because they asked her to help their fight against Hanoi’s communist government.

Lacson is presently in California, according to his spokesman, "to consult with Filipino communities there." Coincidentally, Time magazine came out with a report in its Oct. 29 issue about how the GFV openly operates in the Los Angeles area, an inconsistency with US President George W. Bush’s avowed all-out war against all forms of terrorism.

Corpus was reported to have said that Lacson might be looking for evidence to disprove charges of laundering millions of dollars in the US, "but we have enough proof of his deposits." Coincidentally, too, Time reported in its earlier issue of Oct. 22 that Bush had nixed Democratic legislators’ stricter measures against money-laundering, and became a critic of lax banking laws only after bin Laden’s Sept. 11 bombings in New York and Washington with funds funneled through US banks.

Lacson calls Corpus, who had once defected to the New People’s Army, a communist infiltrator in the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. He lumps Corpus together with former student activists but now Presidential Spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao and Agrarian Reform Sec. Hernani Braganza. Before flying to California, Lacson also said there are communist sleepers in Congress: Bayan Muna sectoral reps Satur Ocampo, Liza Maza and Crispin Beltran. Conservative congressmen said the senator’s ideological labelling was uncalled for since membership in the Communist Party is no longer illegal with the repeal in 1992 of the Anti-Subversion Law.

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