|
The body of a man believed to be that of Dulmatin, a
top Jemaah Islamiah member suspected of the 2002 Bali bombings, has
been recovered by the military in a town of Tawi-Tawi province in
southern Mindanao region.
“As of now, we are conducting
DNA tests to confirm if it is really his body,” Maj. Gen. Ben
Dolorfino said Tuesday.
On the same day, top military
officials announced the arrest of a suspected top member of
Jemaah Islamiah and his two alleged contacts by the Army last
Sunday in a barangay (village) in Davao Oriental province, also in
Mindanao.
They presented Mohamad Baehagu,
26, an Indonesian and supposedly carrying the aliases Latif,
Salman and Tatoh, to the media during a press conference in Camp
Aguinaldo, the military’s headquarters in Quezon City.
Dulmatin’s body was immediately
brought to Zamboanga City, where Rear Adm. Emilio Marayag, head of
naval forces in the region, said teams from the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Philippine police crime laboratory had already
arrived to conduct the DNA tests.
Samples from Dulmatin’s body
will be compared with samples taken from his children who were
recovered in the southern Philippines last May, said Marayag.
Maj. Eugene Batara, the spokesman
for military forces in the South, said the DNA tests will likely
take about a week.
The body was exhumed by members
of the Marine Battalion Landing Team 2 and Air Force Recon troops
from a shallow grave in barangay Balimbing in Panglima Sugala town
late Monday afternoon, said Lt. Col. Ariel Caculitan, the Navy
spokesman.
An informant, whose identity was
not disclosed, led troops to the gravesite, where casualties from an
encounter between troops on January 31 were buried, he said.
“As of now, what we can confirm
is that we have indeed recovered a body, but we are not discounting
the possibility that it belongs to Dulmatin,” Caculitan added.
Referring to Dulmatin, he said,
“Based on the description of the informant, he suffered gunshot
wounds in the head, chest and right foot. This matched with the
recovered body.”
The spokesman said there are
reports saying Dulmatin was sighted during an encounter between
government troops and the Abu Sayyaf, a group of terrorists with
ties to al-Qaeda, in Panglima Sugala on January 31.
“This will be a major
breakthrough,” Caculitan said, adding that, if the reports are
confirmed, this is a big blow to the Abu Sayyaf. Dulmatin carries
the highest bounty of all fugitives known to be hiding in the
Philippines, $10 million—dead or alive—offered by the US
government.
Dulmatin—whose real name is
Joko Pitono but was also known as Ammar Usman—is a Malaysian
engineer from a wealthy family. He is the suspected mastermind of
the bombings of a beach resort in Bali, Indonesia, on October 10,
2002, that killed 202 people, mostly Australian tourists.
Together with fellow Jemaah
Islamiah member, Umar Patek, an Indonesian bomb expert, Dulmatin had
sought refuge with the Abu Sayyafs in Jolo, Sulu, also in Mindanao,
before being sighted in Tawi-Tawi.
As many as 30 Jemaah Islamiah
militants are believed to be hiding in the Sulu, according to
reports.
The Indonesia-based Jemaah
Islamiah was added to the United Nations list of terrorist
organizations linked to al-Qaeda or to the Taliban on October 25,
2002.
US troops and military advisers
have been in Mindanao for more than a year providing training and
intelligence for the Philippine military hunting Jemaah Islamiah
extremists and the Abu Sayyaf.
--WITH AFP, Xinhua, Al JacintoaAnd Anthony Vargas
|
