Philippine officials said Thursday they believe a top Indonesian terror suspect is still hiding on southern Jolo island, amid reports he had slipped out to escape a U.S.-backed manhunt. Army Brig. Gen. Ruperto Pabustan, who heads an anti-terrorism force on Jolo, said Dulmatin was still there, based on the latest information. A military intelligence officer said he might have fled for neighboring Malaysia. "We still believe that he could not turn his back on Umar Patek, who we believe is also still here," Pabustan told The Associated Press by telephone from Jolo, about 950 kilometers (590 miles) south of Manila.Dulmatin and Umar Patek, another militant from the Indonesia-based group Jemaah Islamiyah, are believed to have fled to the southern Philippines in 2003 to escape a massive Indonesian manhunt after they were implicated in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people. They have been together since the 1990s in the eastern Indonesian city of Ambon, where Muslims and Christians fought bloody battles, according to an intelligence report. Washington has offered a US$10 million (euro7.4 million) reward for the capture or killing of Dulmatin, an expert bomb-maker who has been identified by his wife as Ammar Usman from Indonesia's Petarukan region.
A military intelligence officer said Dulmatin appeared to have fled in recent weeks toward Malaysia, citing military tracking of his communications. A police intelligence officer said Dulmatin has slipped out of Jolo but may still be in the southern Philippines, assessing whether it would be safe for him to return to Indonesia, where a recent crackdown led to the fall of Jemaah Islamiyah's top twoleaders. Dulmatin was last monitored on May 10 on Simunol island, in Tawi Tawi province near Jolo, where government troops found his four children but failed to capture him after he apparently detected the pre-dawn raid.