Philippines, allies boosting fight against JI: Arroyo
Philippines, allies boosting fight against JI: Arroyo
Agence France-Presse, Manila
The Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are preparing to thwart
fresh attempts by al-Qaeda-linked extremist group Jamaah
Islamiyah (JI) to plot terror attacks, Philippine President
Gloria Arroyo said on Tuesday.
"All three countries are prepared for a JI build-up," Arroyo
said in a statement.
"We are strengthening legal and operational procedures to deal
with terrorists as well as drug syndicates," she said.
Philippine intelligence officials have said that while the JI
has been weakened by a series of arrests in the region, it still
continues to plan attacks in a bid to establish its dream of an
Islamic superstate in the region.
The JI, believed to be the Southeast Asian arm of Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network, is blamed for the bomb attacks in the
Indonesian island resort of Bali that killed more than 200 people
last October.
Arroyo had earlier acknowledged that the JI, along with Muslim
extremists, have been working to establish a "radical enclave" in
the region and have carried out small clandestine training
operations, including in the southern Philippine island of
Mindanao.
But Arroyo said on Monday that a concerted effort among the
countries concerned could eventually defeat the JI.
"With enough teamwork, we can avert any plan of sowing terror
in the region and finally win this war," she said.
Intelligence officials here have linked the JI to the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country's main insurgent
group that Arroyo has blamed for bombings and attacks that left
nearly 100 dead in the south early this year.
A self-confessed Indonesian member of the JI, Fathur Rohman
al-Ghozi, has admitted to police that JI leaders Hambali, alias
Riduan Isamuddin, and Faiz Abubakar Bafana, had financed a
December 2000 bombing on a Manila train station that killed 22.
Hambali, said to have been the operations chief of the JI,
remains at large while Bafana has been jailed in Singapore.