WTC attacker may have gone to U.S. via Manila, Bangkok

Japan Policy & Politics, Sept 17, 2001

MANILA, Sept. 13 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATES WITH REPORT ATTACKER MAY HAVE LEFT MANILA SEPT. 5)

Philippine intelligence officials said Thursday they are verifying reports that one of the suicide bombers who took part in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York may have entered the United States via the Philippines and Thailand.

Police intelligence officials, who refused to be identified, withheld the identity of the suspected terrorist, but they said he was an Omani and an Islamic fundamentalist member of an Osama bin Laden-led international terrorist group.

The suspect reportedly slipped through the country several months ago from the Middle East. He left Manila Sept. 5 for Bangkok.

''We are still in the process of establishing his trail, but based on initial reports we got from our sources in the (other) Asian countries, our subject disappeared in Bangkok,'' an intelligence official said.

The suspect's name later appeared on the passenger flight manifest of one of the two U.S. airliners from Boston that were hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center twin towers, the official said.

The information surfaced as police and military officials said the terrorist attacks in the United States could be related to a plot uncovered by the Philippine police in 1995 after they arrested a Pakistani terrorist linked to fugitive terrorist bin Laden.

Police Chief Supt. Avelino Razon, a former Manila police chief who was involved in the 1995 operation, said the attacks bring to mind the uncovered operation code-named BOJINKA.

In January 1995, when Pope John Paul was visiting Manila, police arrested terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad at a Manila apartment and seized four sets of explosives along with documents and a laptop computer storing encrypted details of planned terrorist acts.

Just prior to the arrest, a fire had broken out at the apartment where Murad and his two coconspirators -- Ramzi Yousef and Wali Khan -- had been mixing chemicals, forcing them to flee.

Murad was arrested when he went back to retrieve the computer that had been left in the apartment.

The two other men have since been arrested -- Khan in Kuala Lumpur a few days after Murad's arrest in Manila on Jan. 7, 1995 and Yousef in Pakistan on Feb. 7. The three are now serving life sentences in the U.S. after their conviction on terrorism charges.

By decrypting the computer files, investigators uncovered the details of a plot to destroy numerous U.S. aircraft in a simultaneous operation using a timing device planted on flights to the U.S.

Murad and his accomplices also allegedly plotted to assassinate the Pope. Maps of the Pope's routes and equipment for bomb manufacturing were also seized from the apartment.

Intelligence officials believe bin Laden's group has established a terrorist cell in the Philippines, with one of the officials saying there may still be up to four cells in the country.

Most of the terrorists are also believed to have taken flying lessons from an aeronautic school near Manila's international airport, the officials said.

The evidence and testimonies of two Philippine police officers also helped convict Yousef in the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, in which six people died.

Yousef has also been implicated in the December 1994 bombing in the Philippines of a Philippine Airlines flight bound for Tokyo. A Japanese businessman was killed when the small explosive device went off under his seat. Subsequent investigation determined the plotters had used the device to test a new bomb design.

Armed Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan said bin Laden group has channeled support to the local Muslim rebel group Abu Sayyaf through legal front organizations. The Abu Sayyaf, considered by the government to be a group of bandits, continues to hold at least 12 hostages, including an American couple, in the southern Philippines.

Yousef visited the southern Philippine region of Mindanao in the early part of 1994 to establish cells to serve as contacts and to train Abu Sayyaf members on modern explosive devices, Adan said.