ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 05 Oct) – Filipino soldiers in the southern Philippine island of Jolo have captured the Indonesian wife and two children of one of Asia’s most wanted Jemaah Islamiya leader, Dulmatin, blamed for the deadly 2002 Bali and Jakarta bombings.
Troops, backed by U.S. military intelligence, are still pursuing Dulmatin and his companion Umar Patek, both tagged by Jakarta as behind the bombings. The Philippine military said Dulmatin and Patek are being protected by the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group headed by Khadaffy Janjalani.
The woman, Istiada Bt. H. Oemar Sovie, alias Amenah Toha, is currently being interrogated in Zamboanga City, one senior Filipino security official, who asked not to be named, told the Mindanao Examiner on Thursday.
He said the woman and two of Dulmatin’s children were arrested in Jolo’s Patikul town in a pre-dawn raid on Tuesday. The raid also led the arrest of an Abu Sayyaf militant Nadzmir Abduraji Amad in the neighboring town of Talipao.
"What I know was that we have arrested Dulmatin's wife and two of their children in a raid in Patikul. She is being interrogated in Zamboanga," he said.
He said the woman admitted to military interrogators that she is the wife of the 37-year old Dulmatin, also known as Amar Bin Usman.
Dulmatin’s wife also said that she sneaked by boat to the southern Philippine island of Tawi-Tawi from Malaysia in August 2003 and was fetched by Azhar, a Jemaah Islamiya militant, and brought to Jolo island to join the group of the wanted terror leader and the Abu Sayyaf.
The Jemaah Islamiya is also believed as behind the 2004 bombing of a Filipino ferry off Manila Bay that killed 116 people-the second-worst terrorist attack in Southeast Asia after the 2002 Bali bombs. And the December 2000 Rizal Day bombings in Manila.T
The Rizal Day bombings were a series of bombings that occurred in various places in Metro Manila on December 30 within a span of a few hours, killing 22 and wounding more than 100 people. December 30 is Rizal Day in the Philippines and a national holiday, commemorating the execution of the country’s national hero, Jose Rizal.
One of the bombs exploded at an open square less than a hundred meters from the U.S. Embassy.
Troops, backed by U.S. military intelligence, are still pursuing Dulmatin and his companion Umar Patek, both tagged by Jakarta as behind the bombings. The Philippine military said Dulmatin and Patek are being protected by the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group headed by Khadaffy Janjalani.
The woman, Istiada Bt. H. Oemar Sovie, alias Amenah Toha, is currently being interrogated in Zamboanga City, one senior Filipino security official, who asked not to be named, told the Mindanao Examiner on Thursday.
He said the woman and two of Dulmatin’s children were arrested in Jolo’s Patikul town in a pre-dawn raid on Tuesday. The raid also led the arrest of an Abu Sayyaf militant Nadzmir Abduraji Amad in the neighboring town of Talipao.
"What I know was that we have arrested Dulmatin's wife and two of their children in a raid in Patikul. She is being interrogated in Zamboanga," he said.
He said the woman admitted to military interrogators that she is the wife of the 37-year old Dulmatin, also known as Amar Bin Usman.
Dulmatin’s wife also said that she sneaked by boat to the southern Philippine island of Tawi-Tawi from Malaysia in August 2003 and was fetched by Azhar, a Jemaah Islamiya militant, and brought to Jolo island to join the group of the wanted terror leader and the Abu Sayyaf.
The Jemaah Islamiya is also believed as behind the 2004 bombing of a Filipino ferry off Manila Bay that killed 116 people-the second-worst terrorist attack in Southeast Asia after the 2002 Bali bombs. And the December 2000 Rizal Day bombings in Manila.T
The Rizal Day bombings were a series of bombings that occurred in various places in Metro Manila on December 30 within a span of a few hours, killing 22 and wounding more than 100 people. December 30 is Rizal Day in the Philippines and a national holiday, commemorating the execution of the country’s national hero, Jose Rizal.
One of the bombs exploded at an open square less than a hundred meters from the U.S. Embassy.
The U.S. has offered a $10 million bounty for the capture of Dulmatin, an electronics specialist with training in al-Qa'eda camps in Afghanistan. He is a senior figure in the Jemaah Islamiya terrorist organization and is believed to have been one of the masterminds behind the bombings of two night clubs in Bali, which killed 202 people, mostly Australians, including seven U.S. citizens.
Of the known leadership of Jemaah Islamiya at large, there is no one with a higher price on his head than Dulmatin. He is one of the most important al-Qaeda-trained operatives at large, and, of equal importance, he is one of the four top JI leaders known to have sought safe haven in the southern Philippines where JI is regrouping and training a new generation of fighters, according to an Asian terror expert, Zachary Abusa.
Dulmatin was a student activist on his Central Javanese university campus. Coming from a well-to-do family, he dropped out of the university after being drawn into extremist teachings at al-Mukmin, the religious boarding school established by JI founders Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.
He fled to Mindanao in the southern Philippines soon after the August 2003 bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta. There, he is one of four top JI leaders—including Umar Patek, Zulkifli bin Hir and Abdul Rahman Ayub—who have continued to train members of JI and the Abu Sayyaf group in Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) camps in the Philippines, Abusa said.
In 2005, Dulmatin and Umar Patek ordered Abdullah Sonata, a JI operative in Central Java who was arrested in conjunction with the September 4, 2004 Australian Embassy bombing, to dispatch additional JI members to Mindanao for training. He has also called for JI suicide bombers to be sent to the Philippines for operations.
Abusa said Dulmatin, along with Zulkarnaen and Abu Rusdan, was designated for involvement in terrorism by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in April, and placed on the UN's 1267 Committee for terrorist financing in early 2005.
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