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| Southeast Asia |
| MILF thug admits to role in 2000 bombing |
| 2005-03-09 |
| A SELF-confessed member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) arrested last Friday has owned up to the bombing of a shopping mall in Mandaluyong City in 2000, which killed one and injured 20 others. During tactical interrogation, Rahid Buday, confessed that he coddled two other MILF members while they were preparing to attack the SM Megamall Cinema 6, Brigadier General Jose Angel Honrado told reporters. According to Buday the attack was made to scare away investors and show that the government was "not in control of the situation," said Colonel Restituto Aguilar, commander of the Army brigade that arrested the MILF rebel. Buday, wearing an orange shirt, was presented to media in Camp Aguinaldo. Honrado kept mum on Buday's alleged involvement in the Valentine's Day bus bombing in Makati City that killed four people and injured almost 100 others. "It's premature to say that," Honrado told reporters when asked to confirm claims of Major General Raul Relano, Army 6th Infantry Division commander, and Major Bartolome Bacarro, Army spokesman, that Buday was involved in the February 14 attack. Buday was arrested in his safehouse in barangay (village) Layug, Pagalungan town, Maguindanao province last Friday. Recounting the events prior to the mall bombing, Buday confessed that sometime in 2000, Panayaman asked him to accommodate Ambo and Moisan in his home at the Maharlika Village in Taguig City, Honrado said. In May that year, while inside Buday's house, Panayaman gave Boisan and Ambo the explosives, encased in a shoebox. Panayaman told the two to strap the explosives to their bodies and assemble the bomb inside the cinema's comfort room. With Buday's arrest, only one more suspect in the Megamall bombing, a certain Ustadz Nabel Panayaman, has remained at large, Honrado said. Dante Matu Ambo and Danny Buday Boisan were arrested on August 5, 2003. "In the next few days we will corner the remaining suspect," Honrado said, withholding additional details because "operations were still ongoing." Honrado refused to point to the MILF leadership as the mastermind of the attack. "In every organization, there are bad eggs. The MILF is cleansing itself of lost commands," he said. The MILF is set to resume peace talks with the government in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in March. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |