A SUSPECTED leader of the Asian terror group Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI) and two of his local contacts were arrested by government security forces over the weekend in Davao Oriental.

Indonesian Mohamad Baehaqi, with aliases Latif, Salman and Tatoh, was captured in his safe house in barangay Piso, Banaybanay,  Davao Oriental, on Sunday by a team of policemen and soldiers, the military said.

Baehaqi, who is facing multiple murder charges as a result of his alleged involvement in the October 2006 bombing in Makilala, North Cotabato, was presented to the media on Tuesday in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City.

The team also arrested the terror group’s local contacts, identified as Cabiza Generoso and Mohar Abais Generoso.

The three were arrested on the strength of a warrant of arrest issued by Judge Francis Palmones Jr. of the Regional Trial Court in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato.

A caliber .22 Winchester rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, a caliber .45 pistol, cash money amounting to P4,500, two cellular telephones and a military-style camouflage uniform were seized from the three.

They also yielded 24 pieces of blasting caps, explosive substances, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, detonating cord, soldering iron, remote detonating devices, earphone and a bomb-making diagram with notes in Bahasa, dry-cell batteries, cellulate telephone-subscriber identification module packs, a Toshiba laptop computers and two flash drives.

The military said the 26-year-old Indonesian has been in the country since 2003 and was the JI liaison in Central and Southern Mindanao. He is also with the group of fellow Indonesian terrorists Dulmatin and Omar Patek.

Baehaqi was also allegedly involved in the Makilala bombing on October 10, 2006, where more than 12 people were killed.

Meanwhile, the Police Intelligence Group announced its arrest of four most-wanted persons in separate operations it conducted last week in Metro Manila.

The arrests were made by virtue of outstanding warrants of arrests issued by different courts.

The four were Michael Roy Lumawag, Angelo Preciosa de Guzman, Isidro Edem Listones and Orly Villaverde.

The National Police chief, Director General Avelino Razon Jr., said the arrests were in line with his orders to all unit commanders to intensify police operations against wanted persons in their areas.

“Let us continue working doubly hard to make sure that criminals are brought to the bars of justice and be held accountable for the crimes they have committed,” Razon added.

Relatedly, Adrian Baciu, Interpol Bioterrorism Program coordinator, is in the country with police-delegates from eight Asian countries for a five-day trainors’ training on bioterrorism.

The event is sponsored by the International Police Organization General Secretariat based in Lyons, France, in collaboration with the Philippine Center for Transnational Crime and the National Police.

“As bioterrorism is a global threat, we must also respond in a global scale to prevent such incidents from happening and act adequately if it happens,” said Razon, who is also the chairman of the Interpol National Central Bureau in Manila.

Delegates from China, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam will join their Filipino counterparts at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza in Manila for the training-seminar.

JdV seeks House probe of ‘04 poll mess

LAKAS Rep. Jose de Venecia Jr. of Pangsinan said on Tuesday he would file a resolution calling on the House of Representatives to conduct a full-blown investigation into alleged attempts to rig the results of 2004 presidential elections.

Senate probers looking into the October 19 Glorietta Mall blast vowed to dig deeper amid conflicting claims by the Philippine National Police, which asserted it was triggered by a gas explosion against the findings of private investigators hired by the mall owners blaming it on a bomb attack by still- unidentified suspects.

A SUSPECTED leader of the Asian terror group Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI) and two of his local contacts were arrested by government security forces over the weekend in Davao Oriental.

A RANKING Malacañang official on Tuesday confirmed that he had “loaned” P500,000 to former Philippine Forest Corp. president Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. when the latter informed him that he was running out of funds while abroad—and not to keep him from testifying at the Senate hearing on the national broadband network-deal scandal.

THE fact-finding investigation of the Department of Justice (DOJ) virtually turned into a venue for Communications Assistant Secretary Lorenzo Formoso III to defend the government’s decision to award the US$329-million national broadband network (NBN) project to China’s ZTE Co.

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Forensic experts of the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Police have taken samples of body tissues for deoxyribonucleic acid tests to determine if the body that was exhumed on Monday in Tawi-Tawi is that of Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI)  bomber Dulmatin, a military official said.

THE Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday issued a status quo ante order enjoining the Commission on Elections (Comelec) from implementing its resolution ordering the revision of ballots in the 4,847 precincts in the province of Pampanga.

CITY OF MALOLOS—As personnel of the Waste Custodian Management Inc., the operator of the newly inaugurated sanitary landfill in Norzagaray town, are busy preparing for its inaugural operation, environmentalists in Bulacan have proposed alternatives to prevent the sanitary landfill from operating.