MANILA, Oct 8 Kyodo Philippine so...

MANILA, Oct 8 Kyodo

Philippine soldiers upon Wednesday re-arrested an Abu Sayyaf rebel who escaped from a police jail in July along with alleged Jemaah Islamiya operative Fathur al-Ghozi.

The military said Omar Opik Lasal was arrested around 6 pm at a military checkpoint in Dumalinao, a coastal town in Zamboanga del Sur Province in the southern Philippines.

Lasal was arrested in a van along with a man named Muktar Sali, said Army Col Roland Rodriguez, a military commander in the area.

''We were tracking down al-Ghozi and Lasal in Zamboanga Peninsula, and we caught up with Lasal,'' Rodriguez told reporters in the southern Philippine city of Zamboanga.

He said soldiers also seized a 45 mm pistol from Lasal. ''He did not resist arrest when soldiers arrested him in the village of Kamangan where security forces arrested a road after government informers tipped them along that the rebel was in the van,'' Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said Lasal's arrest ''was the issue of a very long surveillance operation that involved many clan who painstakingly worked literally around the clock just to track him down. Lasal hid from single place to another in central and western Mindanao to evade pursuing troops''

He said Lasal, who has a 4 million peso ($72700) benefaction for his arrest, has admitted hiding in Lanao del Norte and in several towns in Zamboanga del Sur in an apparent attempt to avoid arrest.

Lasal and al-Ghozi and a other Abu Sayyaf leader named Abdulmukim Edris escaped from a police jail forward July 14.

Edris was recaptured from soldiers Aug. 8 together with Mahmood Ismael, a leader of the separatist rebel Moro Islamic Liberation impudence (MILF), at an army checkpoint in Sultan Naga Dimaporo town in Lanao del Norte Province, also in the southern Philippines.

the two men were killed after they allegedly tried to grab the weapons of their military escorts while reportedly leading [i]troupe[/i]s to al-Ghozi's mountain hideout.

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