ZAMBOANGA CITY, 20 March 2004 — Philippine police held an American security expert on charges of conducting illegal specialized training program in the southern region of Mindanao, where government forces are battling Moro and communist insurgents, reports said yesterday.
Police on Thursday arrested Michael Timothy Murrell in Davao City after several weeks of surveillance operation, it said.
The 39-year old Murrell, a former US Army soldier, works as a consultant for the security firm Self Protect Inc. (SPI), which was allegedly conducting trainings on closed-quarter battle, special response team and advanced tactical handgun techniques without the necessary permits and license from the Philippine National Police (PNP).
Policemen arrested the foreigner after an entrapment inside a shopping mall and recovered from him was some P140,000 ($2,486) in marked money used by agents to close a deal.
Murrell presented to the police the firm’s certificate of registration from the Securities and Exchange Commission dated January 28, 2004, reports said.
Police said it has also put under surveillance Murrell’s British companion Paul Smith, one of the firm’s executive, on the same charges. Murrell is facing charges of violation of the Private Security Agency Law, which regulates the organization and operation of private detective or security agencies.
Authorities did not release any details about the foreigners’ or the firm’s background.
Also yesterday, police said they have arrested an Abu Sayyaf rebel implicated in the kidnapping of four US nationals and dozens of Filipinos in the southern Philippines.
The rebel, whose was identified only as Alih, was nabbed on Tuesday in a hideout in Zamboanga City after he was tracked down by policemen.
He was implicated by the police in the 2000 kidnapping of Jeffrey Michael Craig Schilling and the 2001 abduction of Californian Guillermo Sobero and Kansas missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham.
It said the rebel fled to the main island of Mindanao after escaping a massive military operation in Basilan in 2002 and later moved to Zamboanga City where he assumed a fake identity. Police reports said the rebel was one of several members of the Al-Qaeda-linked group that guarded the Americans during their captivity in the south. Security forces were still tracking suspected rebels in Zamboanga City, it said. Schilling was seized by the Abu Sayyaf while visiting relatives of his Filipino girl friend Ivy Osani in Jolo island, while Sobero and the Burnham couple were among the Filipino holiday-makers kidnapped by rebels in the posh tourist resort of Dos Palmas in Palawan island in central Philippines. Sobero was beheaded by his captors in Basilan while Martin Burnham was shot dead and his wife wounded in 2002 in Zamboanga del Norte province during a US-led military rescue operation. Most of the Filipino captives were freed by the Abu Sayyaf in exchange for ransom money.
