EDITORIAL  — Stopping poll fraud

DAVAO CITY – Authorities are bracing for a new wave of terror attacks now that fugitive Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist Dulmatin is no longer taking care of his four children, who were recently placed under government custody after a raid in Simunul Island in Tawi-Tawi.

“Just watch out. Dulmatin is freer now. He no longer has the burden that he carried when the four children were still in his custody while he was hiding in some parts of western Mindanao. He must now be strategizing how he is going to carry out that new wave of terror,” a source from the military intelligence community told The STAR.

Dulmatin, whose real name is reportedly Joko Pitono, is one of the suspects in the Bali bombings in 2002 that killed 202 people, mostly Australian tourists. Dulmatin and another Indonesian fugitive, Umar Patek, have been hiding in Mindanao since 2003.

The four children were placed under the care of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in Manila but Indonesian Embassy officials have not been allowed to visit Dulmatin’s children.

The source warned the people of a new wave of bombings and similar attacks as they expect Dulmatin to emerge after his four children were taken into custody by the government.

The Philippine government refused to turn over Dulmatin’s four children to the Indonesian Embassy in Manila, following the delay in the processing of their immigration documents.

The elder three children are undocumented aliens while the youngest was reported to have been born in Sulu in 2005 where Dulmatin briefly lived with his wife, Istiada Binti Oemar Sovie. She followed Dulmatin to Sulu in 2003.

Sovie was deported to Indonesia along with the couple’s two other sons after they were arrested in Patikul, Sulu last November.

The source said Dulmatin had a hard time moving around when his four remaining children were left in his care following Sovie’s captured.

“He (Dulmatin) was concerned with his children then as he knew that the military and their American counterparts were pursuing him and the Abu Sayyaf extremist group that had coddled him,” the source said.

The source said Dulmatin enjoys strong support among the local Muslims in Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, and even those in the Borneo island parts of East Malaysia and East Indonesia, such as Tawau and Lahad Datu.

Sources also con­tradicted earlier pronouncements of military officials that Dulmatin’s morale must be low these days after his children were taken by authorities.