DAVAO CITY, 7 March 2003 — Officials yesterday said they would seek the arrest of four senior leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) over the Tuesday blast at Davao Airport, which killed 21 people and injured more than 160 others.
Investigators said they have evidence suggesting the bomb was planted by a young man, one of those killed in the blast, who was verified to be an MILF member.
They also theorized that the rebel may have been sent to plant the bomb, which was on a backpack he was carrying, but it went off prematurely.
Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said they will seek the arrest of MILF Chairman Hashim Salamat, spokesman Eid Kabalu and Ghazali Jaafar and Al-Haj Murad, the group’s political and military chiefs.
But the MILF, the largest of four groups fighting for an Islamic state in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country, repeated that it was not involved in the attack in Davao.
“The government was able to connect the bombing with the MILF,” Duterte said in a speech. “The order is to arrest everybody — Salamat, Jaafar, Murad and Kabalu.”
Duterte also said multiple murder charges are being readied against Salamat and his three colleagues. Duterte, who heads the investigating team probing the deadly blast, said in a speech before regional peace and order council in Davao on Thursday that the gruesome incident should be treated as a common crime, and not “rebellion-related.”
Rebellion-related crimes, including mass killings, carry only a 12-year sentence, Duterte said.
He said among the key evidence linking the MILF to the blast is a sack half-filled with explosives, which were discovered through leads furnished by an original batch of seven suspects identified as MILF rebels. Police authorities are also preparing murder charges against the suspects.
US and Australian forensics experts will help Filipino authorities investigate the deadly bomb attack in Davao City, presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said in a statement.
The Department of National Defense identified the bomber as Montasser Sudang alias “Taksil (Traitor),” a resident of Kabacan town in North Cotabato province in Mindanao and one of the fatalities in the blast.
“He was carrying the bomb but he was not a suicide bomber,” spokesman Lt. Col. Danilo Servando said.
“What is confirmed here is he is an MILF member . . . the investigators are now theorizing that he was the bomber (who carried a backpack containing the explosives),” he said.
Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes said in a statement that the bomb that Sudang used “exploded prematurely, causing his untimely death.”
Total Lie
“It was not the MILF,” Jaafar, the group’s vice chairman for political affairs, said in a radio interview.
Kabalu, spokesman of the 12,500-member MILF, which is waging a 25-year campaign for an Islamic state in Mindanao, dismissed “a total lie” the government claim that one of its men was the bomber.
“That is a part of psy-war (psychological warfare) because we are still at war with the government,” Kabalu said.
He said Montasser had never been an MILF member and insisted that the man had been at the airport only to fetch his sister.
Kabalu also dismissed earlier statements that suspected MILF members had been arrested for the blast. “None of them are MILF.”
Evidence
The military claims that Sudang was an MILF rebel and that he was under the command of Jibran Ali bin Davao, head of the MILF’s 107th Guerrilla Base Command (GBC). The 107th GBC reportedly operates in the cities of Tagum, Davao and the provinces of Davao del Sur, Davao del Norte and Davao Oriental.
Police sources in Davao named Mastura Gumawan, the senior leader of the MILF forces in the Cotabato region that includes Kabacan, as the one who “directed” the Davao attack.
The military buttressed its claim with Sudang’s summary of information that soldiers of the 602nd Brigade had seized in an encounter with the MILF’s 6th National Guard Division in Barangay Simone in Kabacan three years ago.
The document, filled up on Dec. 22, 1995 when Sudang was 16, bore the MILF heading and had the suspect’s picture attached to it, according to Servando.
Relatives and townmates of Sudang countered that Sudang was not an MILF rebel and that he was at the airport to meet his sister, a contract worker in Egypt, who was flying in from Manila.
A spokesman of Kabacan mayor Luzviminda Tan said Sudang was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Kabacan councilor Danilo Macalipat, one of the 11 suspects detained in Davao City, said authorities had pressed him and the others about Sudang’s identity.
“But we told them he was not a member of the MILF. And that he was just an ordinary farmer. They would not believe us,” said Macalipat who, along with the others, is preparing charges of illegal detention against the CIDG.
“What they did to us was unjust. We don’t have a case and . . . no warrants of arrest had been issued against us,” Macalipat said.
Macalipat said that he and the others were arrested based on the stereotyping of and discrimination against Muslims.
Martial law
Mayor Duterte said he also wants martial law declared in Mindanao as he wages war against those responsible for the bombing.
Duterte, overall crisis manager of Southern and Central Mindanao, said he had no qualms about searching homes to arrest suspected terrorists. “We will enter your house,” he said. He said he was not singling out the MILF, which he tagged as the group behind the bombing.
He said police will be allowed to confront anyone carrying suspicious packages, open bags and raid the homes of terror suspects.
Duterte warned human rights and left-wing critics of his measures not to interfere, and said he was “ready to go to prison” if charged with human rights violations.
He said Filipino Muslims should have “a reality check,” and warned top MILF leaders they would face charges in the bombing.
He said the MILF had planned to target more areas of the city as evidenced by the recovery of a large volume of TNT from two arrested suspects. The suspects were relatives of suspected bomber Montasser Sudang.
Two weeks before Tuesday’s bombing, Duterte said he had received information that the city was the next target.
“What you can do I can do better when the time comes,” Duterte warned. “If you kill young women, men, children, how can I categorize you as rebels. So I consider you terrorists,” he said.
He said the MILF wanted Mindanaons to leave Mindanao. “We cannot go back anymore (from where we came). We just have to face reality. You want peace — we are ready. You want war, then we’ll just have to bite the bullet,” he said.
