Top Al Qaeda Suspect Escapes

Broke Out Of Afghan Facility; Seen As Threat To Asian Security

(AP) 
He failed to gain entry and instead went to a camp in the traditional Muslim homeland of Mindanao, where he trained in jungle warfare tactics along with members of the al Qaeda-linked militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, Conboy wrote.

Next, al-Farouq traveled by sea to neighboring Indonesia, where in 2000 he started setting up training camps for radicals engaged in sectarian clashes with the nation's Christian minority, the book says.

He was also reported to be planning a series of attacks on U.S. embassies and other Western interests throughout Southeast Asia, it says.

Al-Farouq's 27-year-old wife, Mira Agustina, said the United States never told her about her husband's arrest or his escape.

"I don't believe he's a terrorist," said Agustina, whose late father was also an alleged Jemaah Islamiyah operative. "He's an ordinary man who would cry when watching violent movies."

She said she had not heard from him, aside from a few letters he wrote while in Bagram.

"He's vanished, I don't think he's going to reappear," she said.

Conboy said he thought it was unlikely al-Farouq would risk returning to the region.

"He's Iraqi after all," Conboy said. "If he's not hiding out (in Afghanistan or Pakistan), he's probably headed to Iraq to join the fight there."

But a Philippine police intelligence officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media, said al-Farouq posed a danger to the region.

"His support groups are still in the region and that could provide an incentive for him to return," the officer said. "He's dangerous."

U.S. military officials have declined to elaborate on how al-Farouq and the three other Arab men escaped from Bagram.

Kabir Ahmed, the government leader in the area, said American investigators had found where the men fled through a field of wild grapevines.

"The soldiers found the escapees' footprints still in the mud," he said. "It was an amazing breakout. How they did it exactly I still don't know."

But on Oct. 18, the Arab satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya aired a videotape of the four militants describing their escape, according to two editors at the station.

They said they escaped on a Sunday when many of the Americans on the base were off duty, and one of the four, Muhammad Hassan, said to be Libyan, said he picked the lock of their cell.