ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 17 Mar) – Police and military forces arrested an escaped associate of slain Jemaah Islamiya bomber Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi in the southern island of Basilan.
Police said Omar Opik Lasal also known as Merang Abante was nabbed Friday in Isabela City.
Al-Ghozi was one of the most skilled bomb makers belonging to Jemaah Islamiah, a regional terror network closely associated with Al Qaeda.
Lasal escaped from a police detention in Manila together with Al-Ghozi and Abdulmukim Edris in 2003 and was recaptured later in Basilan and had been detained in the Southern Command in Zamboanga City.
Al-Ghozi and Edris were separately killed in an alleged firefight in Mindanao the same year. It was unknown why authorities freed Lasal, who has been implicated in the 2000 kidnapping of California man Jeffrey Craig Schilling in Jolo island.
Lasal is allegedly facing a string of murder and kidnapping charges in Basilan.
Unidentified politicians were reportedly working for the release of Lasal, a senior army official told the Mindanao Examiner on Saturday.
Lasal, the official said, played a key role in the killing of Al-Ghozi, who had a $5 million reward on his head. He did not elaborate. Al-Ghozi admitted involvement in bombings that killed 22 people in Manila on Dec. 30, 2000.
Al-Ghozi was a key link between several militant groups. In addition to his ties with Jemaah Islamiya and al-Qaeda, he trained terrorists from all over the Islamic world in bomb-making at a camp in the southern Philippines allegedly run by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a rebel group seeking independence for the southern Philippines.
Al-Ghozi was closely associated with Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, a top Al Qaeda operative and Jemaah Islamiah leader who was arrested in Thailand.
He also admitted detonating a car bomb in August 2000 at the Philippine ambassador's residence in Jakarta, which seriously wounded the ambassador and killed two others. (Mindanao Examiner)
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