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Friday, October 10, 2003
Lasal, al-Ghozi escape pal, nabbed
ONE of two fugitives who notoriously escaped with Jamaah Islamiyah bomb maker Fathur Roman al-Ghozi from their cell in Camp Crame three months ago was recaptured by a joint police and military task force at a checkpoint in Zamboanga del Sur at 6:10 Wednesday night.
The arrested fugitive and Abu Sayyaf suspect was identified by Southern Command Chief Lt. Gen. Roy Kyamko and Police Regional Director Sr. Supt. Reynaldo Varilla as Omar Lasal, alias Mirang Abante.
Lasal and an Abu Sayyaf suspect, a certain Edris, escaped with al-Ghozi from their detention center in Camp Crame, and since then military operatives have hunted them without letup. Edris was arrested in Lanao del Sur last month but was shot dead when he tried to escape.
Lasal was arrested in the vicinity of Barangay Camanga, Dumalinao municipality, Zamboanga del Sur province while he was on board an L-300 public utility transport with 12 passengers on board.
The van was taking its passenger to Pagadian City. Seized from Lasal was a caliber .45 pistol with two fully loaded magazines, Varilla said.
He was leaving Dinas to elude arrest, Kyamko said, because government operatives in that town were already conducting a house-to-house search for him.
The soldiers and police officers staffing the checkpoint were already on the look out for Lasal and al-Ghozi when they stopped the vehicle and looked at the passengers, Kyamko said during a press conference at the Southcom Thursday morning.
The arrest was the result of Oplan Deep South that was put together by the Police Mobile Group of Zamboanga Sibuguey province and the military's 1st Tabak Division based in the same province.
The operation was launched on October 6 after government authorities received persistent reports of the presence of Al-Ghozi and Lasal in the area.
A military official said they have positive information that Al-Ghozi is in the general area of the Banganian Peninsula, including the nearby town of Tungawan in Zamboanga Sibuguey province.
He said the search has been intensified with the arrest of Lasal and at least a battalion of soldiers, company of reconnaissance troops, and the entire mobile group of the PNP are intensively searching for Al-Ghozi.
He implied that Al-Ghozi is most likely to be in Dinas Municipality, Zamboanga del Sur, which was where Lasal was coming from when arrested, because he said the two have been together since their escape.
The Task Force that arrested Lasal Wednesday night was also responsible for the arrest of Edris in Lanao del Sur earlier.
The on going search, he said, covers seven towns in Zamboanga del Sur and four towns in Zamboanga Sibuguey provinces.
A report said none among 12 other passengers of Lasal was found to have any link with him.
He said Lasal has a P3 million reward on his head "but we are not interested in the reward because we are duty bound to arrest him."
He indicated the civilian informer who has been helping the task force might be entitled to get the reward.
The police mobile group that captured Lasal is part of the province's tracker team, which PNP Director General Hermogenes Ebdane had ordered organized in every province to recapture Al-Ghozi.
It was learned that Lasal, since his capture Wednesday night, has already revealed how Al-Ghozi escaped but he refused to narrate how it was done until after Lasal's tactical interrogation is completed. |
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