An Indonesian woman suspected of planning a suicide bomb attack in the southern Philippines was arrested Saturday in a pre-dawn raid in Barangay San Raymundo in the provincial capital town of Jolo, Sulu, the military said.
The Indonesian woman was identified as 17-year-old Rezky Fantasya Rullie and was the widow of an Indonesian militant killed in Sulu in August, the Joint Task Force for the restive region said in a statement.
The suspect was apprehended along with two others: Inda Nurhaina, the 41-year-old wife of Abu Sayyaf Group sub-leader Ben Tattoo, and Fatima Sandra Jimlani, 19, wife of ASG member Jahid Jam, on the strength of a search warrant issued by the Regional Trial Court in Jolo, Sulu.
Rullie, alias Cici, is also believed to be the daughter of two suicide bombers who killed 21 people in an attack on a Catholic cathedral in Jolo early last year, it added.
That attack was blamed on a group linked to Abu Sayyaf.
The arrest comes less than two months after a pair of female suicide bombers blew themselves up on Jolo island in Muslim-majority Sulu, which killed 15 people and wounded 74 others.
Security forces blamed the August 24 attack on the Abu Sayyaf.
“We have been pursuing foreign terrorist suicide bombers in Sulu after the twin bombing of Jolo town (in August),” said Brig. Gen. William Gonzales, commander of Joint Task Force Sulu.
“Rullie was first on our list since we have received intelligence reports that she is going to conduct (a) suicide bombing,” he added.
A vest rigged with pipe bombs was seized along with other improvised explosive device components from the Jolo island house that is believed to be owned by an Abu Sayyaf leader, the military said.
Listed by the United States as a terrorist organization, Abu Sayyaf is a loose network of Islamist militants blamed for the Philippines’ worst terror attacks and kidnappings of foreign tourists and Christian missionaries.
Suicide attacks were once very rare in the Philippines, but since July 2018 there have been at least five.
Gonzales said the military had been been pursuing foreign terrorist suicide bombers in Sulu since the twin bombings in Jolo last August 24.
The suspected suicide bomber was “first on our list since we have received intelligence reports that she is going to conduct suicide bombing after the death of her husband, Andi Baso, an Indonesian foreign terrorist who was reportedly neutralized during an encounter last August 29, 2020 with two Scout Ranger Battalions under 1102nd Brigade in Patikul, Sulu,” Gonzales said.
“The JTF Sulu under the direction of our Westmincom Commander Lt Gen Corleto Vinluan Jr will never cease to hunt down these foreign terrorists, coddled by Mundi Sawadjaan and Radulan Sahiron,” the general added, noting the brains behind the most recent bombings.
The three suspects are now detained at the Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit of the Sulu Police Provincial Office.