More evidence that the way you fight terror is with the police - not the military.
Europe, Asia Mount Anti-Terror Offensives
By William Branigin
Security forces in Europe and Asia mounted separate offensives in the global war on terrorism today, breaking up alleged terrorist bombing plots in London and Manila and battling Islamic militants in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent.
Authorities in the Philippines, Britain and Uzbekistan portrayed the unrelated operations as thwarting planned terrorist attacks in which groups with no apparent connection to each other intended to advance extremist agendas.
In Manila, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said authorities had foiled a plot to emulate the recent terrorist bombings in Madrid by attacking shopping malls and trains in the capital.
Police arrested four suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf group, at least three of whom allegedly participated in the killing and kidnapping of Americans in the southern Philippines. The fourth reportedly confessed to bombing a passenger ferry that sank off Manila last month, killing more than 100 people.
In London, police arrested eight men said to be British citizens of Pakistani descent and seized half a ton of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer compound that can be used to make bombs such as the one that blew up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. The men, ranging in age from 17 to 32, were arrested on suspicion of involvement in preparing acts of terrorism, Scotland Yard announced.
In Tashkent, Uzbek government forces battled suspected Islamic terrorists for a third day, killing 20 fighters in a siege of an apartment building in which alleged suicide bombers had taken refuge. Since Sunday, more than 40 people have been killed, including several members of the security forces, in Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country that hosts hundreds of U.S. troops at a base near the border with Afghanistan.
In Washington, the Bush administration expressed support for Uzbekistan's authoritarian government, which has come under criticism from human rights groups.
"These attacks only strengthen our resolve to defeat terrorists wherever they hide and strike, working in close cooperation with Uzbekistan and our other partners in the global war on terror," said Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman.
Announcing the disruption of the alleged plot in Manila, President Arroyo said on national television, "We have preempted a Madrid-level attack on the metropolis by capturing an explosive cache of 80 pounds of TNT, which was intended to be used for bombing malls and trains in Metro Manila. Followup operations are ongoing. They will be relentless."
The announcement, which came in the midst of Arroyo's campaign for reelection against a popular actor, provoked some skepticism, with commentators pointing out that the amount of explosives seized was relatively small to carry out attacks on the scale of the March 11 Madrid train bombings in which 190 people were killed.
In Washington, however, a counterterrorism official said, "The operation to break up this cell is a significant development in the Philippine government's counterterrorism efforts." He described Abu Sayyaf as "the most violent of the separatist groups operating in the southern Philippines."
The capture of four Abu Sayyaf members with explosives raised serious concerns about a bombing campaign in the crowded Philippine capital, where even relatively small blasts could cause great disruption, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "You don't have to kill a lot of people to cause terror," he said.
While the arrest of the cell members was significant, the official said, "the question is, did they get them all?"
According to Philippine police intelligence chief Ismael Rafanan, the leader of the cell is a cousin of Abu Sayyaf leader Khaddafy Janjalani and is suspected of beheading a U.S. citizen, Guillermo Sobrero, after he was kidnapped in 2001, the Reuters news agency reported.
The Janjalani cousin, Alhamser Manatad Limbong, known as Kosovo, also allegedly planted a bomb in the southern city of Zamboanga in October 2002 that killed a U.S. Green Beret who was helping to train Philippine forces in counterterrorism operations
Also arrested was Redendo Cain Dellosa, who police said confessed to carrying a bomb hidden in a television set on board a passenger ferry last month. The vessel, Superferry 14, caught fire and sank in Manila Bay Feb 27, killing more than 100 people. At the time, the Abu Sayyaf group claimed responsibility, but authorities did not take the claim seriously.
The Abu Sayyaf once had a loose connection to al Qaeda, but the group has become known mainly as a small, hard-core bandit outfit specializing in kidnapping for ransom.
A marine board of inquiry is investigating the sinking. Crew members and passengers of the vessel have reported that the tourist section in the area of bunk 51 was engulfed in thick black smoke that smelled like gunpowder before the ferry went down. Dellosa confessed that, using an alias, he was assigned to that bunk, planted the bomb and escaped, the Associated Press reported.
The two others arrested in the Manila raids were Radzmar Sangkula Jul, also known as Michael Saavendra, and Abdulrasid Lim. Jul, an explosives expert, and Lim, a suspected member of an Abu Sayyaf urban commando team, are suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of vacationers, including several Americans, in the southern Philippines four years ago.
In Britain, the eight men were picked up in a massive coordinated search involving two dozen raids by about 700 police and security agents.
The half ton of ammonium nitrate was found in a six-foot-high plastic bag at a self-storage facility in west London, according to Peter Clarke, a Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner who heads a counterterrorism unit.
"Part of the investigation will focus on the purchase, storage and intended use of that material," Clarke told a news conference.
Clarke provided few details on the suspects, but other sources said they were Muslims of Pakistani origin.
"As we have said on many occasions in the past, we in the police service know that the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community are law abiding and completely reject all forms of violence," Clarke told the news conference. "We have a responsibility to all communities to investigate suspected terrorist activity."
The arrests came as "a timely reminder that the [United Kingdom] and its interests abroad remain a target," Home Secretary David Blunkett said, according to the Associated Press. The ammonium nitrate was the largest amount of potential bomb-making material seized in Britain since the Irish Republican Army suspended a bombing campaign in 1997, AP said.
The series of clashes between security forces and Islamic militants in Uzbekistan began Sunday night with an explosion that killed 10 people at a house used by alleged terrorists to make bombs, authorities said.
Suicide bombings subsequently carried out by veiled women killed at least three police officers and a child in two incidents, news agencies reported.
In one of the incidents, three female companions of one of the bombers ran into an apartment building, starting a five-hour standoff.
A raid today on an apartment block in Tashkent that served as a suspected terrorist hideout left 20 militants and three police officers dead, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. At least five of the dead militants were women.
The president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, blamed the violence on Muslim extremists, possibly backed by a radical group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, that has not previously been linked to terrorism. The group, whose name means Party of Liberation, denied involvement, AP reported.
washingtonpost.com
lurqer |
