Word: sayyaf
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...even helping to organize rallies against the U.S., and meeting with a wide variety of individuals openly hostile to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's administration. But was he really involved in the wave of terrorist bombings on the southern island of Mindanao that the government blames on Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic guerrilla group that, in its early days, had links to al-Qaeda? Or, as skeptics suggest, is the Philippine intelligence community performing a shadow dance of Colin Powell's efforts in the U.N. to convince the world that Iraq and al-Qaeda are working together...
...ARRESTED. MERANG ABANTE, alleged middle-ranking leader of the Abu Sayyaf Muslim extremist group; in Zamboanga. The Philippine government had offered an $18,500 bounty for Abante's capture. Abu Sayyaf has conducted a spree of kidnappings for ransom and is suspected of being behind a recent series of bombings in the southern Philippines...
...target. A year ago, an explosion rocked the Metro Railway Transit, killing 22 and injuring hundreds of others. The attack was carried out by Indonesian Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, a self-confessed JI member with links to the Philippines' two major Islamic guerrilla groups, the MILF and the Abu Sayyaf. After his January capture in Manila, al-Ghozi said he carried out the bombings on the orders of JI operations commander Riduan (Hambali) Isamuddin. Equally worrying, recent Mindanao bombings suggest that Abu Sayyaf has returned to its roots as a purely terrorist organization rather than a kidnap-and-extortion gang...
...tough-on-terrorism image by appearing on television with arrested suspects. One such photo-op, on Oct. 19, however, went badly awry when Arroyo marched out a prisoner and introduced him as Abu Pula or "Doctor Abu," a forty-something leader of the kidnap-for-ransom group Abu Sayyaf, who allegedly engineered the 2000 abduction of 11 European tourists from a Malaysian beach resort. Alas, the perp she walked wasn't Doctor Abu: he was Mark Bolkerin Gumbahale, a 21-year-old Abu Sayyaf member arrested while playing video games at an Internet cafe in a Manila suburb...
...city of Zamboanga. In an unusual display, they were paraded on national TV before President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who said the men were apprehended as they were preparing another attack. She promised tougher steps against terror groups. Police said the men were members of the Islamic extremist group Abu Sayyaf, which wants an Islamic state in the southern Philippines. IVORY COAST Neighborly Interest Burkina Faso demanded a halt to attacks on foreigners, a feature of the five-week long battle between Ivorian government troops and northern rebels. Burkina Faso Foreign Minister Youssouf Ouedraogo said: "We cannot tolerate any longer...