A commander of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) claims that he was trained by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1981, adding that he also trained his fellow MILF members when he returned to central Mindanao after the two-year training, a television report said.

"I joined the MILF because I saw how military men indiscriminately killed Muslim civilians," Hadji Abdullah Macapaar, the head of the MILF's 303rd Brigade Command in Lanao del Norte, southern Philippines, said in an exclusive interview on TV's channel 2.

"I have learned many guerilla tactics from Osama bin Laden who had trained me in Afghanistan in 1981," Macapaar claimed. He said he had stayed in Afghanistan for two years. When he came home to Mindanao, he started training members of the 303rd Brigade which he headed in Lanao del Norte.

Macapaar was also called James Bond 007 the second, after the death of his brother, an MILF commander who was once called Commander James Bond 007. The same TV network, meanwhile, reported that a certain Filipino-Muslim is working as a cook for Bin Laden.

Quoting sources from Pakistan, the TV report said the Filipino-Muslim cook is just one of the Filipino-Muslims who underwent training in the Al Qaida network's camp in Afghanistan.

Earlier, an intelligence report from Russia said that 50 Filipino-Muslims are undergoing training in the said camp in Afghanistan. Their names were not revealed, but Philippine authorities said the report was an old one and was based on 1981 records.

Abu Sayyaf Group founder, Abdurajak Janjalani, also underwent training in Afghanistan in the early 1980s. He reportedly met Bin Laden there.

Bin Laden's brother-in-law, Jamal Khalifa, established 13 business interests in Metro Manila and several non-government organisations to help Muslims in Mindanao from the mid to late 1980s. The Abu Sayyaf Group reportedly resorted to kidnap for ransom activities since the remittance of funding from fundamentalist groups abroad allegedly failed several times.