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The Philippines is going to deport a Muslim Canadian national this week, after he was reportedly “inciting and recruiting locals to conduct terrorist activities”, a top official from the immigration bureau said on Wednesday.
The Southeast Asian nation has been checking up on intelligence reports that around 100 Muslims in the Muslim-dominated south had left the nation in response to international calls made by militants to fight in Syria and Iraq.
Siegfred Mison, head of the Philippines’ immigration bureau said that Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, a professor of Islamic and Arabic studies in Dubai, will be deported in this week after it was decided by the bureau that he was an “undesirable” individual. He also said that Philips was the second foreigner to be deported from the Philippines due to alleged connections to extremism, with an Australian preacher caught in the province of Cebu in central Philippines last July.
“Based on various sources of information, he was supposed to be inciting and recruiting people to conduct terrorist activities”, Mison said, without giving additional details.
According to the Police, Phillips was also barred from entering Australia and the United States since his activities were treated as a national security threat.
Police officers had begun questioning him in Davao City on Sunday, only a few days after his arrival, Mison said, adding that Phillips was due to go to the city of Zamboanga to give a lecture.
“He was also barred from entry into Germany and other European states for his activities. Right now, he is in the custody of the police. He is blacklisted”, Mison said.
The bureau’s blacklist is supposed to contain 40,000 foreign nationals and Filipinos, including member of criminal gangs, fugitives and militants.
Mison added that it has been difficult for Philippine immigration authorities to keep out militants unless they get information from other countries or Philippine intelligence agencies.
