Two of Southeast Asia's deadliest Islamic militant groups are collaborating in the southern Philippines to train extremists in explosives, weapons and combat tactics, graduating 23 Indonesian recruits just over a week ago, a jailed terror suspect said Wednesday. The jungles in the south also are providing refuge to terrorists involved in major attacks elsewhere in the region, including the 2002 bombings in a nightclub district on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, the prisoner said in an interview with The Associated Press.U.S. officials have long worried that unrest in the Philippines' impoverished Muslim homeland could be exploited by terror groups. The suspect, Rohmat, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, provided a glimpse into the workings of the already known liaison between the Southeast Asian group Jemaah Islamiyah and the Philippines' Abu Sayyaf movement, which authorities say also has links to al-Qaida. Rohmat, a 26-year-old Jemaah Islamiyah member who was captured March 16, said he roamed with Abu Sayyaf guerrillas for about two years, providing combat training, dodging military assaults together and overhearing their terror plots.
He spoke in Tagalog, a sign of the depth of his immersion in the Philippines. He said recruits at the Jabal Qubah training camp run by Jemaah Islamiyah on Mindanao island finished their studies just days before he was caught at a military checkpoint. "There were 23 men who have just finished the courses. I heard they would be sent back home and others would stay behind to train a new batch," a handcuffed Rohmat said during a 30-minute interview held at a military safe house in the presence of officials. He said a separate group of 10 Indonesians from Jemaah Islamiyah -- including two suspects in the Bali bombings that killed 202 people -- were with Abu Sayyaf guerrillas near the camp, but he said he didn't know why. He identified one as Dulmatin but declined to name the other.
Rohmat, whose homeland is the world's most populous Muslim nation, said he traveled to the southern Philippines as a trainee with other Indonesians in January 2000. Two years later, he said, he became an instructor in Islam and martial arts, teaching Indonesians and local Abu Sayyaf recruits in Mindanao's Maguindanao province and on nearby Jolo island. But he denied allegations by intelligence officials that he taught Abu Sayyaf members how to build bombs, particularly the use of mobile phones to trigger homemade explosives. Around 2002, Rohmat said, he was designated by Zulkifli, then the Indonesian head of Jemaah Islamiyah operations in the Philippines, to be the contact man for dealings with Abu Sayyaf, including training its recruits and staying close to its leaders, Khaddafy Janjalani and Abu Sulaiman. Abu Sayyaf planned attacks on its own, independent of Jemaah Islamiyah, which only provided training, he said. Rohmat bore a scar on his right cheek that he said was suffered during a military air strike in November in which Janjalani and Sulaiman scampered out of a targeted house just in time.