LITTLE MENTIONED in recent reports on the war on terror were the arrests last September of two men linked to al Qaeda. What makes these arrests particularly interesting is that they happened in Mindanao, an island in the southern Philippines. Jasem Alhasan, a Kuwaiti, was detained along with a known Abu Sayyaf rebel, Ustadz Sanday. (Abu Sayyaf is the terrorist group that held Americans Martin and Gracia Burnham hostage for more than a year and beheaded another American, Guillermo Sobero.) Alhasan was later deported back to Kuwait on October 8. The other suspect, Mahmoud Afif Abdeljalil of Jordan, is still being interrogated–according to authorities, he plays a much larger role in the al Qaeda network, having taken over a construction firm and other business fronts from Jamal Khalifa, the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden. Philippine immigration chief Andrea Domingo explained that since Khalifa’s departure in 1994, Abdeljalil has continued to use these fronts to funnel money to al Qaeda. His home in Zamboanga was also supposedly used as a safehouse for al Qaeda operatives in the region. It is still unclear to what extent Abdeljalil is actively involved in terrorist operations in Southeast Asia but authorities will no doubt take “pains” to extract it from him. (The Philippine National Police may very well order a “TI” or “tactical interrogation” as they did in 1995, when dealing with terrorist Hakim Abdul Murad. Connected to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and an assassination attempt against the pope, Murad was interrogated for 67 days.)