ZAMBOANGA CITY, 4 June 2004 — The separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) yesterday vehemently rejected charges that it hosted Hassan Bakre, an Egyptian national who had been arrested in the southern Philippines over alleged links to the Al-Qaeda network.

Ameril Umbra, chief of the MILF’s 109th Base Command, said he cannot remember any instance of Bakre visiting the group’s Camp Omar, “much more to taught inside the camp.”

“Hasan Al-Bakre has nothing to do with the MILF. He is just a simple Egyptian trader framed by the authorities for a still unknown reasons. He is innocent of all those charges,” separatist spokesman Eid Kabalu said in a separate interview.

Earlier in the day, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff Gen. Narciso Abaya said the Egyptian national had confessed to having even fought with MILF members against government troops four years ago.

Abaya and other military officials said Hassan trained with other Egyptian and Indonesian militants at the MILF camp. He was said to be a bomb instructor.

Abaya said Hassan arrived in the country in 1999 from Malaysia along with six other foreigners. He stayed at theMILF’s main base, Camp Abubakar in Maguindanao province, and later hid in Camp Omar after government troops captured Camp Abubakar in 2000

Abaya said Hassan is also suspected to have have trained some members of the Jemaah Islamiyah, an alleged chapter of the Al-Qaeda in southeast Asia, in demolition.”

Abaya refused to elaborate on possible charges against Hassan, who he said was using invalid travel documents.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said the military was again trying to persecute an innocent man.

He said the Egyptian was a “bankrupt businessman” who was invited by a local religious leader in the 1990s to settle in Datu Piang, where he married a Filipina with whom he has six or seven children.

“As far as the people of Datu Piang are concerned, Bakre is a simple man who even engaged in fishing activity just to support his family living. He was never observed to have traveled outside Datu Piang since his arrival 10 years back,” Umbra quoted a resident as saying.

Troops arrested Hassan in his home in Datu Piang following a long surveillance operation, officials said.