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A controversial Muslim congressman was the target of
a powerful bomb outside the House of Representatives that killed him
and three others, police said Wednesday.
Rep. Wahab Akbar of Basilan, one
of the most influential figures in the country’s restive South,
died at the FEU Hospital on Tuesday night as doctors fought to save
his life after the blast. A driver and two congressional aides were
also killed. Akbar’s aide, Julasiri Hayudini, who is also acting
president of the Muslim Consumers Association of the Philippines,
died at the St. Luke’s hospital about 4:40 p.m. Wednesday. Maan
Gale Abustanillo, an aide of Rep. Pryde Henry Teves of Negros
Oriental, also died yesterday. Teves was also hurt from the blast.
“We now have evidence of a bomb
. . . the cell phone and pieces of nails used as shrapnel,” Manila
police chief Geary Barias said Wednesday.
“They could see their
target,” he said. “Those circumstances would show the target was
Congressman Akbar.”
Barias explained the cell phone
was likely used as a remote detonator, which was recovered some 41
meters away from the explosion site.
Investigators have already
determined where the explosion came from—a motorcycle parked near
the steps of the south lobby where lawmakers are normally picked up
by their drivers.
Barias said the motorcycle was
destroyed and its plate number is still missing. The engine appears
to be tampered with, but the engine number suggests the motorcycle
was a Honda, he added.
“We are already making an
effort to ask Honda as to who owns the motorcycle. Our focus is to
recover the IED [fragments] and look for the signature,” Barias
said. IED is the acronym for Improvised Explosive Device.
Quezon City Police District
director, Senior Supt. Magtanggol Gatdula, has been designated as
head of “Task Force Batasan,” which will lead the investigation.
Police leads
A group had claimed
responsibility for the Tuesday bombing, but police would not
disclose its identity, Philippine National Police chief, Director
General Avelino Razon Jr., said.
“We received a text message
that a certain group owned up to the explosion,” Razon said
without elaborating.
The Manila Times learned that the
text message claims to be from the Abu Sayyaf.
Referring to the text message,
Barias said, “We are not taking that hook, line and sinker.”
Also, a news radio program on
Tuesday quoted an Abu Sayyaf commander in Basilan denying that they
had a hand in the killing of a former comrade.
Military officials, on the other
hand, said the public should not to speculate on the motives behind
the explosion and that the police should be allowed to do its job.
More security
Interior and Local Government
Secretary Ronaldo Puno said the entire House security staff had been
suspended and replaced by special police commandos.
Nine people were injured in the
blast, which hit the south lobby of the sprawling Congress complex
in Manila on Tuesday night just minutes after most congressmen had
left for the evening. House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. actually
left 10 minutes before the blast took place.
Akbar was known to be a former
member of the Abu Sayyaf who later turned against the group and
helped the government in its antiterrorism campaign against the
militants on the southern island of Basilan, Barias said.
But Akbar’s spokesman denies
the lawmaker was ever part of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf.
Akbar, who was 47, twice served
as governor of Basilan, a jungle-covered southern island used by the
al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf as a base to launch kidnappings and
bombing raids.
He had spoken in the past of his
links with Abubakar Janjalani, an Afghan-trained Islamic firebrand
who founded the Abu Sayyaf initially to fight for an independent
state in the South.
After Janjalani was killed in a
gun battle with police in 1998, Akbar severed ties with the group
and later joined the mainstream to seek elective office.
Trouble continued to hound him.
Akbar had known political enemies
in Basilan, where politicians maintain private armies and often
engage authorities—and each other—in armed attacks.
It was the first time that
Congress had been targeted by such an attack, and lawmakers said
Wednesday they wanted to get the House back to work as soon as
possible.
“We want to show that
everything is normal,” de Venecia said. “We don’t want to show
we are scared of the terrorists or assassins who did this criminal
and dastardly act.”
In the Basilan capital of Isabela
hundreds of people lined the streets, many openly weeping, as
Akbar’s body was borne by a pickup truck to its place of burial.
“We have lost a great
leader—a leader who united Muslims and Christians, a leader who
crushed the Abu Sayyaf. Now we are apprehensive the Abu Sayyaf will
come back,” said Chris Puno, a spokesman for Akbar’s
administration.
 --AFP
with Anthony Vargas
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