PHILIPPINES | Arrested militant: Terror suspect alive

A captured Abu Sayyaf commander told investigators that a top Southeast Asian terror suspect, who the military reported was killed in a U.S.-backed airstrike two years ago, is alive and being harbored by a hard-line Muslim rebel group in the southern Philippines, a confidential police report said.
Abu Sayyaf commander Khair Mundos, who was arrested near Manila’s international airport on June 11, acknowledged his group has fallen into disarray, without a central leader, burdened by infighting and surviving largely on extortion and kidnappings, according to a police interrogation of Mundos, a copy of which was seen by The Associated Press yesterday.
Mundos’ account echoes military and police assessments of the Abu Sayyaf, which they said has been weakened and isolated in remote jungle patches in the south by more than a decade of U.S. military-backed Philippine assaults.
The U.S. State Department says Mundos is a key Abu Sayyaf leader and financier who was captured in the southern Philippines in 2004, but escaped from jail three years later. While in police custody, he acknowledged having arranged the transfer of funds from the al-Qaida terrorist network to the Abu Sayyaf to finance bombings and other terrorist attacks in the south, the State Department said.
The Abu Sayyaf “has no central leadership,” Mundos was quoted in the report as saying, adding the militants “do not have direction” and are “engaging in extortion and kidnapping activities only to sustain their daily needs.”
U.S. terrorism expert Zachary Abuza warned that crimes could serve as a lifeline to the Abu Sayyaf and enable it to bounce back, launch more serious attacks and reconnect with more foreign jihadists. “The Abu Sayyaf group vacillates wildly between ideologically motivated terrorism and wanton criminality,” Abuza said. AP

Jim Gomez, Manila