RI police probes case of Manila terror suspect
RI police probes case of Manila terror suspect
Agencies, Jakarta/Manila
Indonesian police said on Saturday they were investigating the
case of a man arrested in Manila believed to be a key member of
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Philippine police had said the man was Indonesian, but
national police spokesman Saleh Saaf told Reuters the 30-year-old
was a Canadian citizen, who may have lived in Indonesia in the
past.
"We've got the information that he did live in Indonesia from
the Philippine police, which comes from the man himself...(and)
we will now try to look into this, very, very carefully," Saaf
said by phone from the town of Semarang, 400km east of Jakarta
where investigations were going on.
"Of course we did investigate (his nationality) and...the fact
is, he is a Canadian citizen of Arab descent," the police
spokesman added.
Details remain sketchy in a case that has been linked to at
least three Southeast Asian countries as well as Canada.
Saaf said initial inquiries over whether the man had links
with Indonesia had proved fruitless although investigations would
last for at least several days.
Indonesian police have been focusing on central Java, where
there are strong historical Arab ties with the world's most
populous Muslim country.
Singapore and Malaysia have arrested groups of alleged Islamic
militants over the last month, linking them with al Qaeda and
also saying they had cells in Indonesia.
Recent media reports have also speculated al Qaeda, blamed by
the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks, is active among
Indonesia's 210 million population, a charge Jakarta disputes.
A recent Canadian media report said a man of Arab descent
believed to be the group's ring leader was still on the run and
had a Canadian passport. It named him as "Sammy".
One of the aliases of the man arrested in the Philippines was
"Sammy Salih Jamil" but it was not immediately known if they were
the same person.
In the Philippines, AFP reported that the Philippine police
said Saturday that the Indonesian arrested here in connection
with a series of deadly bombings in 2000, has been linked to a
terror plot in Singapore and al Qaeda network.
The Indonesian, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, was arrested on
Tuesday based on information provided by Singapore that he was a
key leader of the Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamic "terror group
operating in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia," a police
statement said.
Police also said they believed al-Ghozi had links to bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Al-Ghozi's arrest led police in the southern Philippines on
Thursday to seize a cache of explosives and weapons meant for
attacks on Southeast Asian countries and arrest three Muslim
Filipino associates.
The police said that Al-Ghozi had provided funding and bomb
components to a certain Mukhlis Yunos, the principal suspect in
an investigation into deadly bomb blasts in Manila in December,
2000 that claimed over a dozen lives and left scores injured.
The Indonesian had been an explosives trainer with the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a local Muslim separatist group
that has since opened peace talks with the government, the police
said.
He went to Singapore in October to "assist in the preparation
for the bombing of the US and Israeli embassies, the Australian
and British high commissions, U.S. companies and military
installations," the police statement added.
Al-Ghozi was due to leave for Bangkok on the day he was
arrested, the Philippine police said.