Terror suspect slain

From  the Manila Standard Today (Dec 16): Terror suspect slain

The suspected bomber lies dead (top) while SWAT operatives inspect the scene of the crime and his backpack. Police photo

 

A suspected Malaysian terrorist who belonged to the Jemaah Islamiyah terror group was killed on Friday by the police in front of a hotel in Davao City after he allegedly threatened to detonate a bomb hidden in his black knapsack, the police chief Senior Supt. Ronald dela Rosa said. The suspected terrorist, Mohd Noor Fikrie Bin Abud Kahar, was shot dead by police late Friday following a scuffle inside a hotel where he and his Filipino wife had checked in, de la Rosa said. His wife, Annabelle Nieva Lee, was arrested by the police.

As the couple was checking out, the man tried to grab a backpack that the woman was holding containing a homemade bomb. Officers, meanwhile, tried to seize the man, who broke free and threatened to detonate the device. “You want the bomb? You want the bomb? Shoot me! Shoot me! I will explode the bomb,” de la Rosa quoted the man as saying. This prompted officers and people in the hotel lobby to scamper out for safety, the police chief said.

The man and his wife then ran into the street, where they hugged each other as the man raised a cellphone, threatening to use it to trigger the bomb, de la Rosa said. The man grabbed the backpack from his wife and ran toward a park full of Friday night revelers, leaving the woman, who was taken into custody by police, he said.

Guards locked the park’s gate, and the man, still raising his hand that held the cellphone, ran into a packed restaurant, where a sniper shot him twice in the chest. The man did not immediately fall, so other officers fired at him and killed him, de la Rosa said. The bomb was fashioned from a 60 mm mortar shell that was subsequently defused by SWAT’s ordnance team, he said.

The suspect was trained by Umar Patek, a terror leader who figured in the Jakarta attack on Christmas eve 2000 where 19 people were killed, and the October 2002 Bali attacks that had 202 people dead. Patek last November was sentenced by an Indonesian court to 20 years in prison. Police said intelligence reports indicated terrorists planned to explode a bomb in Davao, a port city and a commercial hub on Mindanao.

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2012/12/16/terror-suspect-slain/