ZAMBOANGA CITY, 8 October 2005 — A pair of senior Jemaah Islamiya bomb-makers, implicated in the Bali bombings, are believed to be hiding in the southern Philippines, where security forces are battling local terrorists.
Filipino authorities are hunting down Pitono, also known as Dulmatin, and Umar Patek, tagged as behind the 2002 twin bombings on the Indonesian resort island that killed more than 200 mostly foreign tourists.
The United States has offered up to $10 million for the capture of Dulmatin and $ 1 million for Patek’s head.
It was not immediately known if they were involved in the recent three bomb attacks in two tourist areas in Bali that killed at least 26 people — among them foreign nationals.
More than 50 others were injured as blasts ripped through three restaurants — two in the Jimbaran beach resort, the third in Kuta 30 kilometers away.
But both Dulmatin and Umar Patek are believed to be in the company of Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khaddafy Janjalani, the target of a US-backed military manhunt in the south.
The country’s largest Muslim separatist group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) yesterday confirmed the presence of Dulmatin and Umar Patek in Mindanao island and said it was helping the government track down the duo. “We have reports that they are hiding in Mindanao and our forces are hunting down the duo — Dulmatin and Patek — as part of an agreement the MILF signed with the government last year,” MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu told Arab News.
Under the agreement, the MILF should help security forces hunt down terrorists and criminal elements in areas where the rebel group is actively operating.
Kabalu said Dulmatin and Umar Patek were last spotted in Maguindanao province along with local terrorists, but had slipped from a massive military operation that started in July. “As far as we know was they have managed to escape from Maguindanao and could be hiding elsewhere on the island, or even as far as Jolo in the southern Philippines.
“There are efforts to arrest them, including Abu Sayyaf leader Khadaffy Janjalani and his lieutenants,” he said.
The Jemaah Islamiyah is believed to have formed links with the Abu Sayyaf up to five years ago. Abu Sayyaf rebels have claimed to be fighting for an Islamic state in the southern Philippines, but have been dismissed as a mere criminal gang for the repeated kidnapping and killing of tourists and local residents.
Dulmatin, a 32-year-old Malaysian electronics expert, evaded a massive police hunt in Indonesia.
Indonesian police said Dulmatin was believed to have worked alongside another Malaysian, Dr. Azahari Husin, to assemble the massive car bomb, as well as the explosives vest used by a suicide bomber who attacked the Paddy’s Bar in Bali.
Police say he triggered the Sari bomb using his cell phone. Umar Patek, on the other hand, was one of three men who mixed the explosives used in the Bali bombings.
Dulmatin, a veteran of the Afghan war against Russian forces and one of the few JI militants able to assemble and explode large chlorate and nitrate bombs, was also said to be raising funds for a terror campaign in the Philippines and Indonesia.
Aside from Dulmatin, Umar Patek and Dr. Azahari Husin, five others linked to the 2002 Bali bombings — Amrozi, Imam Samudra, Mukhlas, and Idris, Ali Imron — were arrested, charged and sentenced in Jakarta.
Dulmatin was also implicated by Philippine authorities to the 2003 bombing of the Davao International Airport and Sasa wharf in Mindanao.
Three of his local Abu Sayyaf contacts — Pedro Guiamat, Ali Salipada and Norodin Mangalen — were arrested in June in Maguindanao province.
A bomb hidden in a backpack exploded in March 2003 at the Davao airport terminal, killing 19 people, including a US missionary William Hyde, and wounding more than 145 people.
A second bomb explosion also ripped through a passenger terminal in Sasa wharf in Davao City that killed and wounded dozens of people.
The United States has listed the Abu Sayyaf as a foreign terrorist organization and froze it assets abroad.
Washington also offered as much as $5 million bounty for the capture of known Abu Sayyaf leaders, including its chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani for the killing of two kidnapped US citizens in 2002 in the southern Philippines.
