ZAMBOANGA CITY, 12 October 2003 — Security forces arrested a man who was allegedly plotting to bomb a Catholic church in this southern city after a conscience-stricken recruit backed out and informed authorities about the terror plan, officials said yesterday.
The 29-year old Jibin Mohamad was arrested late on Friday inside his house in the village of Rio Hondo, Councilor Ajibun Asakil told the radio network DXRZ-Radyo Agong. Security officials said they recovered explosives from Asakil’s house.
Asakil said he organized a security force and went to the suspect’s house and arrested Japal. “There in the house we have recovered two time bombs and then we handed the suspect to the police,” he said.
Mohamad was cornered after another man named Juju Japal told Asakil about the plot, which was to carry bomb the church inside a Spanish-era fortress called Fort Pilar.
“I cannot do it. My conscience is disturbing me. Besides, I am afraid because I have my own children and family,” Japal told the radio station in an interview yesterday.
Zamboanga City is currently celebrating a weeklong Catholic festival called the “Zamboanga Hermosa” and the Fort Pilar, an open-air shrine near Rio Hondo, has been jampacked with devotees from the different provinces in the south.
It was not immediately known if Mohamad is a member of the Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group, which has threatened to mount fresh attacks against civilian and government targets in the southern Philippines.
Police officials did not give any statement about the arrest.
The arrest came a day after Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Solaiman warned that his group would launch attacks during the visit of US President George W. Bush in Manila on Oct. 18.
Last year, Abu Sayyaf rebels detonated a bicycle-rigged with explosives in front of Fort Pilar during the Zamboanga Hermosa festival and killed one government soldier guarding the shrine.
A series of bomb explosions — blamed on the Abu Sayyaf — on three department stores and a roadside café here last year also killed dozens of civilians, including an American soldier who was participating in a joint RP-US anti-terrorism warfare.
The United States and the Philippines have also implicated the Abu Sayyaf to the killing of two American kidnap victims Californian Guillermo Sobero in 2001 in Basilan island and Kansas missionary Martin Burnham in 2002 during a rescue operation in Zamboanga del Norte province.
Washington included the Abu Sayyaf group in its list of foreign terrorist organizations and offered as much as $5 million bounty for the capture of each of five known rebel leaders implicated in the killing of Sobero and Burnham.
