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| Southeast Asia |
| Experts sez JI leaders trained at MILF camps |
| 2004-09-30 |
| Top leaders of an al-Qaida-linked group accused in Asia's worst terror attacks once taught or were trained at secret Philippine camps - which are still active despite government claims they've been dismantled - a U.S. security analyst said Thursday. The camps still produce would-be attackers, allowing Jemaah Islamiyah to survive arrests and crackdowns, said American terror expert Prof. Zachary Abuza, director of Asian Studies at Simmons College in Boston, Mass. Most of the camps are in remote southern strongholds of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has repeatedly denied any Jemaah Islamiyah links and pledged to help authorities hunt down foreign terrorists, according to Abuza. The Philippines government acknowledges that suspected foreign militants used to train in southern camps, but maintains that troops have dismantled them. "There, unfortunately, have been people who'd come out of these camps who have been involved in either attacks or in key leadership position in the JI organization," Abuza told Associated Press Television News. "They need these training camps," he said. "JI simply cannot continue to sustain the organization without their members getting such training" in Islamic indoctrination, intelligence-gathering, military skills and bomb making. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has repeatedly denied any Jemaah Islamiyah links and pledged to help authorities hunt down foreign terrorists I guess if they actually use the word "terrorist", then they must be referring to Israel and the US and it's allies like Australia. MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said Bashir and other foreign Islamic preachers may have visited the frontÂ’s main camp in the past as friends of the rebel groupÂ’s late chairman, Salamat Hashim, who wanted to show off a model Muslim community free of crime and vice. "They may have been here as peaceful guests, not as terrorists," Kabalu said. haahhhaaaaa..wipe tears from eyes.. I think Scrappleface inserted that part as joke. |
| Posted by: 2b 2004-09-30 3:12:18 PM |