Peace process adviser Jesus Dureza, in a statement, said Kjartan Sekkingstad was released by his captors at around 2 p.m. on Saturday.
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Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the decapitated head of a Caucasian male recovered on Monday, April 25, 2016, in the southern Philippines belongs to Ridsdel, who was taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in September 2015.
A Norwegian held hostage by a notorious kidnapping-for-ransom gang in the strife-torn southern Philippines was released on Saturday after a year in captivity and will soon be handed over to officials, authorities said.
He was referring to the founder of the Muslim rebel group Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), who are now in peace talks with the government and have been working with them to secure Sekkingstad’s release.
The Abu Sayyaf is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that has claimed more than 120,000 lives since the 1970s.
Sekkingstad was supposed to be presented to the media here but the event was cancelled due to inclement weather.
Major Filemon Tan, spokesman of the military’s Western Mindanao Command, said the release of Sekkingstad was the result of “intense” military operations against the Abu Sayyaf.
“Men of Misuari and former Gov. Sakur Tan and other volunteers helped in the release”, he added.
It was not immediately clear whether Sekkingstad was ransomed off. Duterte suggested in a news conference last month that a huge ransom had been paid to the militants but they continued to hold on to him anyway.
Sekkingstad is one of the four people taken by the Abu Sayyaf from a marina in a Samal resort here past year.
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The Canadians were beheaded after huge ransom demands were not met and the woman was freed before President Rodrigo Duterte came to power on June 30. Filipino Marites Flor was released in June.
