ZAMBOANGA CITY, 12 January 2005 — A court has ordered the release of a suspect in the deadly bombings in the southern city of Davao that killed dozens of people two years ago.
Abdul Manap Mentang, a member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) who was arrested in October, was freed on Friday as part of an agreement between the government and the rebels, the group’s spokesman Eid Kabalu said.
Mentang was arrested along with his girlfriend Monawara Usop and associate Mursid Mubpon, who were linked by the military to the attacks at the Sasa wharf and Davao City International Airport in March 2003.
The military said Mentang confessed to the bombings and also plotted to bomb the US Embassy in Manila.
“Abdul Manap Mentang is once again a free man. He and the others are all innocent of the military charges and were only framed and forced to admit the crimes,” Kabalu told Arab News.
He said Usop was released last year, while Mubpon would be freed this week.
The government agreed to drop all criminal charges against Mentang’s group and more than 100 MILF rebels who were arrested in an anti-terror sweep in the south since 2003 after the MILF threatened to pull out from the peace talks.
Among those charged were MILF chieftain Murad Ebrahim and his deputies Ghazali Jaafar and Aleem Aziz Minbantas.
The military described Mentang and Mubpon as bomb and munition experts and local contacts of the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah.
The military said Mentang headed a terrorist cell that set off a bomb on a waiting shed of the Davao City International Airport on March 4, 2003, killing 22 people, one of them an American missionary, and wounding 127 others. Mentang’s group was also blamed for the bomb attack on April 2, 2003 at the Sasa wharf that killed 16 people and wounded 39 others.
An Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah operative named Zulkifli alleged ordered the bombings.
Mentang was allegedly among a dozen MILF rebels that trained in demolition and urban terrorism at the group’s Camp Hudaybiyah in the southern Lanao del Sur province in 1995 under Zulkifli.
Zulkifli was arrested in Malaysia in 2003, while Jabidi is believed to be still hiding at an MILF camp in the southern Philippines, the military said.
Kabalu strongly denied his group had links with the Jemaah Islamiyah not the MILF has a camp named Hudaybiyah.
The MILF has repeatedly and publicly disavowed any links to terror groups and has invited the military to inspect its camps in Lanao del Sur.
