The eyewitness accounts by Rolando Ulah and several other Filipinos once held by Abu Sayyaf provide a glimpse into clandestine terror training by suspected militants with ties to Al Qaeda and to rebels in the southern Philippines, home to this mostly Roman Catholic nation's Muslim minority.
Philippine authorities have long suspected that Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesia-based Al Qaeda ally, has links with Abu Sayyaf and the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Muslim separatist group accused of providing sanctuary and training grounds to foreign militants.
Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for numerous attacks and plots across Southeast Asia, including the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people. Jemaah Islamiyah seeks to establish a hard-line Islamic caliphate comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the southern Philippines.
Abu Sayyaf, known for kidnap-for-ransom schemes, has been blamed for bombings in the Philippines, including an attack in 2002 outside an army camp in southern Zamboanga city that killed an American Green Beret and two Filipino civilians. It has claimed responsibility for an explosion and fire on a ferry a month ago that killed more than 100 people.
According to the former hostage accounts, training started with a dawn jog and was capped at night by an Arabic reading of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, and prayers led by the Indonesians, who spoke a smattering of Tagalog, English, and Arabic. Their yells of "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great," echoed through the jungle as they trained, Ulah said.
"They were taught sniping, combat, tae kwon do, and dismantling bombs and making bombs that could be set off using cellphones and alarm clocks," said Ulah, who escaped from the Abu Sayyaf last June after more than three years of captivity on southern Jolo island.
The Indonesians taught the young guerrillas, mostly recruits from Jolo and the nearby island of Basilan, how to safely open mortar rounds or unexploded bombs dropped by Philippine air force planes and picked up by villagers, who sold them to the rebels. The explosives could be rigged as timed bombs or their powder could be used to make separate bombs, he said.
