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| Southeast Asia |
| Terror network growing in the Philippines, sez CNN Jakarta bureau chief |
| 2003-12-18 |
| The Philippines, with the help of the Abu Sayyaf group and the separatist Moro Islamic liberation Front (MILF), has helped in creating a fertile ground for the growth of the Jemaah Islamiyah since 1994, said Maria Ressa, a Filipina author of the newly launched book entitled Seeds of Terror. About 11 Indonesians would be graduating from a training camp, allegedly manned by the MILF, in the southern Philippines in January 2004, said Ressa, bureau chief of the Cable News Network, in Jakarta. She was previously based in Manila. "One of the camps, named Camp Palestine, was an exclusive Arab facility; another named Camp Hodeibia was for Jemaah Islamiyah, which was set up with Al Qaida’s help in 1994. Another was named Camp Vietnam. They were all located at 10,000 hectare Camp Abubakar in Maguindanao," Ressa told Gulf News. She saw the camps through a CD, which documented their growth from 1994 to 2000. Inside the camps were two bridges including a football field. Quoting her source, Ressa said the three camps were built with lots of money because they were located in a very inaccessible area in the northeast portion of Camp Abubakar. She said that Camp Bushra, also an MILF controlled area in another southern province, has giving training to several radicals. In 2000, the military took over Camp Abubakar and dismantled all the training camps there. In several intelligence documents almost all the arrested terrorists claimed they underwent training in the southern Philippines, said Ressa. "One (report dated August 24, 2001) named 14 men from Indonesia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar," said Ressa, adding, "Years before that and until today, thousands of militants have learned terrorist techniques in more than 27 camps set up by the MILF in the south." "These training camps are not just patterned after the Al Qaida camps in Afghanistan, they are run with Al Qaida’s support and leadership," she added. 1995 was a very important year for the Philippine military because at that time, the military intelligence managed crack at members of the so-called terror groups who were responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993. In 1995, the Al Qaida sent new operatives to the Philippines to run terror plots against the US. Al Qaida began infiltrating and co-opting homegrown organisations," said Ressa, adding all of these activities helped bring about the September 11 attacks. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |