Terror leaders could be caught before year ends -- official

By Joel Guinto
INQUIRER.net
Last updated 05:42pm (Mla time) 12/22/2006

ISLAMIC extremist leaders with links to the al-Qaeda global terror network, who have eluded a five-month-old military dragnet on the southern island province of Sulu, could be caught "before the start" of 2007, the military commander in the region said.

"I am hopeful maybe before the start of the year we will be able to get the high value targets Sahiron, Dulmatin, Patek, [and] Janjalani," Lieutenant General Eugenio Cedo, chief of the Armed Forces Western Mindanao Command, told reporters in Camp Aguinaldo.

Cedo was referring to Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani, his sub-commander, Radullan Sahiron, and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) explosives experts Dulmatin and Umar Patek, the alleged brains of the 2002 Bali
bombings.

Some 7,500 troops have been running after the group in the Sulu jungles since August 1.

Cedo maintained the group was still in Sulu, as he branded as "misinformation" reports that they have slipped to neighboring Basilan island or central Mindanao.

"[Based on] intelligence information, they are still in the island. They can't get support from any other place other than Sulu," Cedo said.

He said Navy ships have surrounded Sulu and were ordered to "intercept dubious watercraft" that might attempt to leave the island.

The military commander also expressed that the arrest of the terrorist leaders would spell the end for the Abu Sayyaf, which he said numbered around 400.

"You know, the concept is that if you destroy the leaders, the others will just follow, they will surrender or what," Cedo said.

Under the Oplan Bantay Laya 2, the military's new internal security plan that will take effect on January 1, the military was tasked to "destroy" the Abu Sayyaf at the "soonest."

The Armed Forces was also ordered to "defeat" communist insurgency by the end of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's term in 2010 and "contain" the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

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