MANILA (AP) -- Two Filipinos will share a $ 500,000 (euro393,000) reward from the U.S. government for a tip that led to the arrest of a key terror suspect in the southern Philippines last year, the U.S. Embassy said Monday.
Hilarion del Rosario Santos III, the alleged head of the Rajah Solaiman Movement, a group of Christian converts to Islam that has been closely associated with al-Qaida-linked militants, was arrested in southern Zamboanga city in October together with six other suspects.
His group is believed to have links to Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf, which is operating in the southern Philippines, and was suspected in the February 2004 bombing of a ferry in Manila that killed 116 people and the simultaneous bombings in Manila and other cities a year later, which killed eight people.
He also was connected to plots to attack the U.S. Embassy in Manila and American citizens, the embassy said.
It said the money, to be presented Wednesday, comes from the U.S. State Department ``Rewards for Justice'' program, which provides cash rewards for information leading to the arrests of terrorists involved in acts against Americans.
The U.S. government has already paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in rewards for the capture and killings of Abu Sayyaf members and leaders.
U.S. counterterrorism training of Filipino troops has been credited with successes against the Abu Sayyaf, which is on a U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
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