Young persons being trained for terrorism a concern: analyst

August 31, 2020

A security analyst on Monday said the possibility of young people being used by terrorists is '' not far from happening'' as shown in recent bombings in Jolo.

"Based on my study, the phenomenon of juvenile terrorism is not far from happening because the children of the Jolo Cathedral bombers are being suspected to be trained for suicide terrorist attacks. They are two female children and one male child. The male child is more worrisome because he is just 10 years old," said Rommel Banlaoi in a forum.

"Lately, we received a lot of photos of females and children being trained not by suicide terrorism but their topic is  martyrdom so that is their topic, and they just graduated ( from it)," he said.

Banlaoi said the photos include around 15 people, including females and children.

"I hope our law enforcement authorities, the combined effort of police and military will able to address this problem," he said.

"This phenomenon (of juvenile terrorism) is happening in Syria,  Afghanistan, Iraq and because I think the terrorism is like virus, like pandemic. It is lethal, contagious. It spread easily, I hope (government authorities) will able to prevent the spread of this virus of juvenile terrorism in the Philippines," he added. Robina Asido/DMS