Al Khobar owns up to latest Cotabato blast

KIDAPAWAN CITY – Police investigators are verifying the claim of a Mindanao-based extortion group that it was responsible for the recent bombing in a North Cotabato bus terminal that killed a teenager and injured two bystanders. According to Senior Inspector Winston Seniel, chief police of Carmen town where the blast occurred, he received text messages from a man claiming to be an Al Khobar member warning of a bomb attack if North Cotabato Governor Lala Taliño-Mendoza will not heed their demands for "protection money." The texter used a Globe Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) number 09057519181 in texting Seniel, who on Tuesday said he received the messages an hour after the Monday morning blast. One of the messages read: "Maayong hapon dera cer. Kung puwede pakibegay lang number ni Gov para matapos gulo diyan sa part ng North at kung hinde may other pa kayo aabangan galing sa amin. Eto grupo ng Al Khobar. Pakiabot lang kay Gov." (Good afternoon, sir. Please give to us the mobile phone number of Cotabato Governor Lala Taliño-Mendoza if you want to end the conflict in the north. If not, expect more to come from us. This is the Al Khobar. Please send this message to the governor.) At 12:45 p.m., or two hours after the blast, Seniel received another text message from the same number, this time saying: "Maayong udto sa inyo diha. Dina kinahanglan kung sino ako. Si Gov para matigil ang bomba dira sa inyo. Kung hinde meron pa ako budget para sa inyo." (Good afternoon. It’s not important to know who I am. I want the governor so the bombings would stop in your area.) Using the text messages as basis, the North Cotabato police said extortion was the motive behind the bombing. The explosion occurred on Monday, around 10:45 a.m., after Carmen municipal mayor Roger Taliño, father of Taliño-Mendoza, finished his speech during the culmination of the town’s 54th foundation anniversary inside the municipal gym. Taliño-Mendoza was present when the explosion happened. Authorities recovered from the blast site fragments of an improvised explosive device (IED) fashioned from an 81-mm mortar attached to a Nokia 3315 mobile phone as triggering device. The blast killed Delsonn Pontongan, 17, of President Roxas town, and injured Artemio Rivera and Roni Sabaldo, both residents of Carmen, all in North Cotabato. Seniel said the sender of the text message insisted on getting the personal mobile phone of the governor, but instead of giving in to the demand, he forwarded all the messages to the governor’s father. Seniel said the previous bombings also had the same style. Few minutes after every blast, a text sender identifying himself as an Al Khobar member would own the bombing and demanded from the town or city mayor protection money ranging from P50 thousand to millions of pesos. One of the officials in North Cotabato that admitted receiving extortion and bomb threats from the Al Khobar was Kidapawan City Mayor Rodolfo Gantuangco. Gantuangco said that five minutes before the bombing on Nov 2007 of the KMCC Mall, one of the biggest department stores in the city, the texter demanded from him considerable sums of money. In a move to pin down the Al Khobar group, Gantuangco admitted having deposited some P50 thousand in a private bank here last November 2007 in an account in Ipil, Zamboanga del Sur. It was also reported the city government has paid another P50 thousand to the Al Khobar last December 2007 when the group threatened the mayor of staging another bombing in the city. Gantuangco said the money that was used to pay the Al Khobar had come from his own pockets. - KBK, GMANews.TV