A Muslim militant whose group plotted bomb attacks in the Philippine capital has admitted the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network bankrolled their activities, according to a court document released yesterday.
Malik Alimuddin last week turned state witness in the case against his fellow militants from the Raja Solaiman Movement (RSM), a group of Christians who converted to Islam.
He was arrested in a police raid late last month along with RSM founder Ahmad Santos and seven other suspects in the southern city of Zamboanga.
In a sworn statement to state prosecutors, Alimuddin said he had maintained an account with the state-run Land Bank where money from JI and other "foreign" supporters was being wired to finance their operations.
The account was opened on the instructions of Santos, he said.
JI, blamed for a string of deadly attacks, aims to set up a pan-Islamic state in Muslim areas of Southeast Asia.
"Funds from the Jemaah Islamiyah and the al-Qaeda were being sent to that account," Alimuddin said. "The money that goes to that account is used by the Abu Sayyaf and the RSM in their armed struggled against the government."
He agreed to open the bank account to investigators.
Alimuddin said the Abu Sayyaf later tapped Santos to form the RSM to encourage Christians in the mostly Catholic nation to turn against the government.
Intelligence agencies in Manila have identified the RSM as a major threat because many of its members can blend in easily in Manila to hit "soft targets." It is not known how many members the group has.
Meanwhile, Philippine troops yesterday overran an abandoned camp of Abu Sayyaf rebels on a southern island where three days of fighting killed seven soldiers.
Brigadier General Alexander Aleo, commander of a regional anti-terrorist task force, said the abandoned camp in Indanan town, Jolo island, 1,000km south of Manila, could accommodate as many as 100 guerrillas.
Indanan was the site of fierce fighting between government forces and the Abu Sayyaf since last Friday, which also left 21 soldiers wounded.
Officials said at least 21 Abu Sayyaf rebels were killed in the fighting "based on radio intercepts," but military ground commanders claimed they have recovered only three bodies of slain guerrillas.
Aleo said pursuit operations against the rebels have been slowed down by heavy rains, but stressed that the offensive was ongoing.
More than 4,000 villagers have already fled their homes for fear of being caught in the fighting.
The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of self-styled Islamic militants formed in the early 1990s to fight for an independent state in the southern island of Mindanao that now specializes in kidnappings for ransom and bomb attacks.
In February the Abu Sayyaf, with the help of Alimuddin's group, staged three simultaneous bomb attacks in Manila's financial district and in two southern cities, killing six and wounding more than 100 people.
Shortly after that, troops recovered a tonne of explosives from a brother of Santos. The explosives were allegedly meant to be used for a truck bomb attack on the US embassy.
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