ZAMBOANGA CITY, 13 August 2003 — Police yesterday said they finally caught the businessman who supplied explosives to Muslim militants accused of plotting bomb attacks in Manila and Singapore. Police said they arrested Antonio Reyes on Bohol Island in the central Philippines.
Reyes provided bomb materials to Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, an Indonesian bomb expert of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror group, and local separatist guerrillas, said Chief Supt. Robert Delfin, a regional police chief.
Al-Ghozi, who was serving a 12-year term for illegally possessing explosives, escaped last month from police with two other suspected Muslim militants and is the object of a nationwide manhunt.
Al-Ghozi has also been charged in connection with a string of bombings that killed 22 people in Metro Manila on Dec. 30, 2000. His escape came a few days before his arraignment on that charge.
After his arrest last year in Manila, Al-Ghozi led police to the explosives buried in a backyard in the southern port city of General Santos. The planned attacks in Singapore fell through after Singaporean authorities arrested several suspected Jemaah Islamiyah plotters.
Reyes was charged after he was identified by Al-Ghozi as providing explosives for the Dec. 30 attacks.
Delfin said some of the material from Reyes was intended for attacks against the US and Israeli embassies and other Western targets in Singapore last year.
Reyes is also one of the sources of explosives used by some members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for bombings and demolition training, police said.
Military officials yesterday accused the MILF of hiding Al-Ghozi, now the subject of a manhunt in the southern Philippines.
