COTABATO CITY, Philippines — A regional terrorist network linked to al-Qaida has continued to train its militants in the southern Philippines, aided by local Muslim separatists, police and intelligence sources said.
The militants, all Indonesians, are training at a camp established three years ago and now operating under the protection of rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, according to intelligence sources and a summary of the interrogation of Taufiq Rifqi, an Indonesian militant who was captured here last month.
Rifqi’s testimony startled Philippine officials, who assumed they had deprived al-Qaida’s Southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah, of its primary training ground three years ago when government soldiers overran its base. It also raises the stakes for peace talks aimed at ending the 31-year insurgency on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Diplomatic and security sources said a peace deal could close Mindanao as a vital center for the training and transit of foreign terrorists — what a Western official in Manila called "a kind of Afghanistan east."
Within two weeks of Rifqi’s arrest, police backed by military forces raided two safe houses that contained handwritten notes in Indonesian on making biological weapons, diagrams of amateur rockets, components for explosives and other documents and bomb-making materials.
The capture of Rifqi, who security officials said was Jemaah Islamiah’s treasurer and logistics chief in the Philippines and arrived in Mindanao in 1998, was a wake-up call for the government, which had been "in denial about the existence of Jemaah Islamiah in Mindanao," a Philippine intelligence official said.
"We are open in saying that the Jemaah Islamiah is a major threat," Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita said. "We know the Philippines is a good target for their activities."
Until 1995, Southeast Asian terrorists were training in Muslim mujaheddin camps in Afghanistan, but Jemaah Islamiah’s leaders decided to seek a location closer to home. Hundreds of militants, mainly Indonesians, slipped into the Philippines by fishing boat and other vessels through unregulated borders and trained at the main Moro Islamic Liberation Front camp. That site was destroyed by government troops during an offensive in mid-2000.
What officials did not know was that a new camp — Jabal Qubah — was set up almost immediately.
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