Monday, October 16, 2006 Maxey: An act of God By Ram Maxey Bar None
THE discovery Wednesday of an unexploded bomb near the municipal hall of Makilala, North Cotabato, may hold the mystery of the series of recent bombings in Central Mindanao.
Attached to the improvised bomb was a cell phone, which was supposed to trigger the explosion. Recovered by investigators, the cell phone was a veritable treasure of information that points to a sub-commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) as the probable culprit behind the recent series of bombings in North Cotabato.
The investigators have retraced the trail that led to the bombings, identifying one Basit Usman of the MILF as the author of the attacks upon alleged orders of Indonesian Dulmatin of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror group who is being protected by the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) which is the object of a massive military dragnet in the jungles of faraway Sulu along with another Indonesian terrorist, Omar Patek.
But, as expected, the unflappable MILF spokesman, Eid Kabalu, has denied involvement of his group in the bombings. Just the same, the government has filed criminal charges against Basit Usman based on the information contained in the cell phone. It ought to be an open-and-shut case.
In the past, Kabalu had always denied involvement of the MILF in attacks on government outposts, saying only that they may have been the handiwork of "renegade" members of the MILF who had not been authorized to initiate the incidents.
This time however, how will Kabalu explain the recovery of the cell phone that virtually points to an MILF commander as the one behind the attacks last Tuesday, six civilians killed, and Wednesday's aborted bombing? The MILF spokesman can deny knowledge of the plot until he is blue in the face, but this time he will be spitting into the wind.
Come to think of it, the failure of the second bomb to detonate surely may have been an act of God to help authorities solve the mystery behind the incidents and lead to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators.
God works in mysterious ways, and is always on the side of good against evil.
