Posted on 03/01/2004 11:07:23 AM PST by knighthawk
The Philippines has deported two US citizens who were arrested last year on suspicion of links to Muslim separatist groups.
Brothers Michael Ray Stubbs, 55, and Jamil Daud Mujahid, 56, have been turned over to American marshals, who escorted them back to the US.
The Immigration Bureau says both were blacklisted as "undesirable aliens and threats to national security".
The two have been in detention since December after being arrested south of Manila.
Authorities say the suspects were earlier seen meeting with leaders of the Abu Sayyaf and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of self-styled militants blamed for a series of bombings and kidnappings in the south in recent years.
The MILF has been waging a rebellion for the establishment of an independent Islamic state in the southern third of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines.
The US and Philippine governments have branded the Abu Sayyaf a terrorist organisation, whose leaders once allegedly had loose links with the Al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
The military has accused the MILF of training foreign Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militants.
A former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employee and his brother face deportation from the Philippines after their arrest in that country for suspected links to Muslim rebels and charities tied to al Qaeda, authorities said Tuesday.
Michael Ray Stubbs, 55, of Antioch, who worked at the nuclear-weapons laboratory for 10 years ending in 2000, and his brother, James Stubbs, 56, a convert to Islam, were taken into custody on immigration violation charges Dec. 13 in the town of Tanza in Cavite province.
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