‘Sayyaf bomb expert’ slain in Pakistan carried $1-M bounty

Abdul Basit Usman, described by the U.S. State Department as a Filipino bomb-making expert with links to the Abu Sayyaf Group and carrying a $1-million bounty on his head, was killed by a missile fired from an American military drone earlier this month, Pakistani officials claimed.

An AP report said that two Pakistani intelligence officials cited "militant informers" as the source of their information about the suspected Abu Sayyaf operative. According to the report, Usman was killed last January 14 when a U.S. drone-launched missile struck a compound in Pakistan's Waziristan tribal region. Eleven others were also killed in the strike, which Pakistani authorities earlier said had targeted the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud. Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles that are controlled from remote sites, have been used by the U.S. military for both surveillance and air strike purposes. If proven true, Usman's presence in Pakistan could be evidence of continuing links between the Abu Sayyaf and Islamic armed groups in other trouble spots of Asia. Verification Philippine military intelligence officials said they are verifying the reports about Usman's presence and death in Pakistan. "Our intelligence officers are still checking the accuracy of the report if it was really him," Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner, chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines public affairs office, told reporters on Friday. The U.S. State Department's list of most-wanted terrorists identifies Usman as a bomb-making expert with links to the Abu Sayyaf and the Jemaah Islamiyah network that is said to operate across various Southeast Asian countries. According to media reports from past years, Usman was captured in Sultan Kudarat province in 2002, but escaped in the same year. He was tagged by the AFP as the suspect behind deadly bombings in the Mindanao cities of General Santos, Kidapawan and Cotabato that killed and wounded dozens of civilians. In January 2007, the US offered a $50,000 cash reward for information leading to Usman's capture, according to the website of the U.S. Embassy in Manila. Two years later, in May 2009, Washington raised the bounty for the arrest and/or conviction of Usman to $1 million, according to US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly as reported by the Philippines' Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process. Intervention Meanwhile, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which is fighting for an independent Islamic state in southern Philippines, has repeatedly denied that Usman is an MILF member, insisting that it even ordered its forces to hunt down the terrorist and bring him to justice. On the other hand, in a 2007 statement, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) had criticized the US government for offering a bounty for someone like Usman who is implicated in a local criminal act, saying that this practice was "an act of intervention" in the country's internal affairs. Brawner insisted, however, that it will be good news for the Philippines if the report of Usman's death is true. The AFP spokesman explained that the loss of Usman will cripple the Islamic terrorists' capability "because he is an expert on IEDs and bombs." “Kung totoong namatay siya (if it’s true that he died), that will be good for us (because) we are against terrorism," Brawner said. - with reports from AP, KBK/HGS/ARCS/JV, GMANews.TV