JOLO, Philippines, , 20 February 2008 — The Philippine military yesterday said troops have arrested a suspected Jemaah Islamiyah operative and may have found the body of a key suspect in the deadly 2002 bombings that killed 202 people in Bali, Indonesia.
Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippine (AFP), said Mohamad Baehaqi, an alleged member of the Indonesia-based terror network, was arrested Sunday in Davao Oriental province in the southern Philippines.
Esperon said Baehaqi, 26, has been in the country since September 2003 and admitted he joined a group of JI operatives hiding and training militants in the Philippines.
Baehaqi was said to be part of the group of Dulmatin, also known as Ammar Usman, one of the suspects in the Bali bombing and who is believed to have been killed during a gunbattle in the southern Philippine province of Tawi-Tawi. “We are awaiting DNA results to determine whether the body belongs to Dulmatin,” said Maj. Eugene Batara, a spokesman of the Western Mindanao Command in the southern city of Zamboanga.
Dulmatin’s body, he said, was dug up from a shallow grave on Monday in a village in the town of Bato-Bato in Tawi-Tawi, where troops previously clashed with Abu Sayyaf militants.
The body was taken yesterday to Zamboanga City, where US and Philippine forensic experts took tissue samples before it was buried.
Troops clashed with the Abu Sayyaf on Jan. 31 in Bato-Bato after a failed operation to rescue a kidnapped teacher.
Indonesian police, however, expressed doubts about Dulmatin’s reported death.
“If (this is) according to Manila, Dulmatin has already died five times, shot by the military,” said Bekto Suprapto, Indonesia’s police anti-terror chief.
Anton Bahrul Alam, a spokesman for Indonesia’s national police, said their liaison officer in the Philippines had checked there with police who said the body was that of a local resident.
Aside from Dulmatin, the authorities said as many as 30 JJI militants are hiding in the Sulu Archipelago, including another Bali bomber, Umar Patek.
US troops are currently assisting the Philippine troops in tracking down known leaders of the Abu Sayyaf and the Jemaah Islamiyah in the southern region.
In Jolo Island yesterday, US officials also handed over several infrastructure projects to Sulu Gov. Sakur Tan and pledged more support top help Manila in peace and development efforts in the province, where hundreds of American soldiers are deployed and conducting joint medical mission with Filipino forces. (With input from Agencies)
