The US State Department has declared Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, the Abu Sayyaf leader tagged as the brains behind the Jolo Cathedral suicide bombing in January, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
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This developed as the Islamic State, the terror group which the Abu Sayyaf has pledged allegiance to, has been using social media to lure out-of-school youth into becoming suicide bombers, a local analyst said Friday.
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In a statement released two days before the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, the United States gave the SDGT designation to Sawadjaan, “an identified coddler of foreign terrorists in southern Philippines.”
The same State Department release identified Sawadjaan as the amir or leader of the Islamic State in the Philippines.
On Wednesday, Sawadjaan’s nephew, Nanz Sawadjaan, was killed in an encounter with the military in the Abu Sayyaf stronghold of Patikul, Sulu, last Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Rommel Banlaoi, president of the Philippine Society for Intelligence and Security Studies, said ISIS has been using social media to “glorify” suicide bombing, which traces its roots to the Tausug of Mindanao, who used the attack to fend off Spanish and American colonizers in centuries past.
“There was a conventional knowledge that Filipinos were not yet prepared to sacrifice their lives”•until ISIS emerged,” Banlaoi told the ABSCBN News Channel, noting that the terrorists attempted to revive the tactic during a ferry bombing in Lamitan, Basilan at the turn of the century.
A suspected suicide bomber was killed in the Sept. 8 attack near a military detachment in Sulu, the fourth suicide bombing in Mindanao since 2017.
“ISIS changed everything and made it [suicide attacks] like the most effective, most favored… because [it’s] high-impact, easy. It can resonate to others that offering your life is a worthwhile endeavor. You will be martyred,” he told ANC.
“The most convincing way to convert people to embrace the idea of suicide terrorism is social media. They started sharing a lot of literature and narratives glorifying suicide terrorism,” the analyst added.
Out-of-school youth and those who have family problems are the most vulnerable to extremist indoctrination, said Banlaoi.
Authorities said there are seven known foreign terrorists currently hiding, conducting or planning attacks in Central Mindanao, while 60 other foreigners in the country are being monitored for possible ties to terrorism.
Sawadjaan was identified by witnesses as the one who planned the Jan. 28 Jolo Cathedral suicide bombing, which left 23 dead and wounded more than 100 others.
The military also identified Sawadjaan as the coddler of foreign terrorists who carried out successive suicide bombings in Sulu. They were twin bombings at the gate of the 1st Brigade Combat Team in June that killed five persons, and the lone suicide bombing carried out by a “Caucasian-looking” woman at a military checkpoint. Both of the bombings were in Indanan, Sulu.
Along with Sawadjaan, 12 other terrorists from other countries were declared SDGTs by the US State Department, all leaders of the following groups: Hizballah, HAMAS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, ISIS, ISIS-Philippines, ISIS-West Africa, and Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan.
The US Department of the Treasury also designated 15 terrorists from ISIS, ISIS-Philippines, ISIS-Khorasan, Al Qaida, HAMAS, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force as global terrorists.
By virtue of an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump, the SDGT is touted as “the most significant update of terrorist designation authorities since the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.”
The American government seeks to “expose and isolate organizations and individuals, and deny them access to the US financial system” by branding them as global terrorists.
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