A Philippine court yesterday sentenced to death an Indonesian and two Filipino Muslim militants for their roles in the bombing of a Manila bus in February.
The Feb. 14 attack killed four people and wounded scores of others. The al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group had claimed responsibility for the bombing, as well as two other bomb attacks in two southern towns on the same day, in retaliation for a military offensive against militants.
The Indonesian, who goes by one name, Rohmat, is a confessed member of the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah who was captured in March in the southern Philippines, where authorities say several dozen Indonesian militants have been training local guerrillas in bomb-making and plotting attacks.
PHOTO: EPA
Rohmat pleaded not guilty, while two Filipino co-accused, Gamal Baharan and Abu Khalil Trinidad, admitted to multiple murder charges.
Prosecutors have dropped charges against another suspect, Gappal Bannah, an Abu Sayyaf member, after he became a state witness.
Rohmat said during his arraignment in April that he had nothing to do with the bombing because he was in the Philippines' southern Mindanao region at the time. But he claimed he provided training in weapons, tactics and map reading to the three other suspects.
"This decision convicting all the accused of the complex crime of multiple murder, murder, and frustrated murder, was rendered after thoroughly and painstakingly evaluating the evidence presented, the most significant of which included the ... voluntary pleas of accused Baharan and Trinidad [and] the clear and categorical testimony of accused-turned state witness [Bannah]," Judge Marissa Guillen of the Makati City Regional Trial Court said in a statement.
Prosecutors also charged Abu Sayyaf chiefs Khadaffy Janjalani and Abu Sulaiman for the bus bombing. The two leaders remain at large.
During the five-month trial, one of the witnesses, a bus conductor, identified Baharan and Trinidad as passengers who left the bus in a hurry shortly before the blast, state prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion