|
Monday, October 13, 2003
Arroyo says al-Ghozi shot dead, a 'warning to terrorists'
MANILA -- (Updated 1:00 p.m.) President Arroyo said Monday that Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) bomb-maker Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi had been shot dead and that his killing should allay people's anxieties over terrorist attacks.
The military said al-Ghozi, an Indonesian, was killed on the southern island of Mindanao on Sunday, three months after he escaped from a Manila police prison where he had been serving a 17-year jail term for illegal acquisition of explosives.
"The death of al-Ghozi signals that terrorists will never get far in the Philippines, and that the long arm of the law will eventually get them," Arroyo said in a statement.
"This event should lift much of the anxieties of our people."
Al-Ghozi's body has been taken to a morgue in the Mindanao port of General Santos for autopsy, said southern Philippines military spokesman Colonel Renoir Pascua.
An army division reported to the southern command "that al-Ghozi's fingerprints matched those of the cadaver that was taken to the Collado Funeral Homes," Pascua told reporters in Zamboanga City.
The military said al-Ghozi was killed in a clash near the Mindanao town of Pigkawayan.
There have been conflicting accounts of the incident.
The police and military claim al-Ghozi was killed in an "encounter."
But officials in the area said there had been no reports of a battle, giving rise to speculation that he may have been caught and killed.
The governor of the area where al-Ghozi was reportedly killed, Emmanuel Piņol, said residents claimed to have heard no fighting.
"There were only two shots, heard. There was no firefight," Piņol said over DZBB radio in Manila.
Shortly after he was convicted for explosives possession, al-Ghozi was reported to have confessed that he used part of the stockpile to bomb the Manila light rail system, killing 22 people in December 2000.
He was also reported to have said the JI had planned to use the remainder for a bombing campaign in Singapore.
Southeast Asian governments allege the JI, blamed for the Bali bomb attacks that killed 202 people in Indonesia last year, has close ties with the al-Qaeda network behind the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
Al-Ghozi's reported killing came less than a week before a visit to Manila by US President George W. Bush. One of two Filipino militants from the Abu Sayyaf group who escaped with al-Ghozi in July was last week caught, while the other was killed by police in a early August.
"We now have accounted for all three fugitives from justice, who escaped from detention 13 weeks ago, and neutralized any threat that could have been posed by them," Arroyo said.
She noted a "growing partnership" among the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the United States in efforts to curb the root causes of terrorism.
The OIC, the US government and the UN have all pledged their support in Manila's efforts to strike a peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has been waging a 25-year separatist insurgency in Mindanao.
The 12,500-strong front has denounced links with the JI, despite persistent intelligence reports that its men had helped al-Ghozi during his 13 weeks on the run. (AFP) |
|
|
|
 |
| click
to comment on this article or discuss it with other readers |
[return to top]
[home]
|
|
