The Abu Sayyaf Group freed three Indonesian hostages in Sionogan, Sulu early yesterday morning, a day after the extremist group released Norwegian captive Kjartan Sekkingstad.
Advertisement
Last week at Villamor Air Base in Pasay City, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he was considering shifting priority away from the U.S. for acquisition of defense equipment.
He was abducted together with Canadians John Ridsdel, Robert Hall and Filipina Marites Flor on September 21, 2015 at the Ocean View Resort in Samal Island.
Brende said authorities in both Norway and the Philippines had been working on Sekkingstad’s release all week but “we wouldn’t set our joy free before Sekkingstad was confirmed to be well” and out of the clutches of Abu Sayyaf.
Hostages Canadian national Robert Hall and Norwegian national Kjartan Sekkingstad are seen in this undated picture released to local media, in Jolo island in southern Philippines.
A notorious kidnapping-for-ransom gang in the strife-torn southern Philippines enjoyed another lucrative payday when it released a Norwegian hostage after a year in captivity, analysts said today.
Last Saturday, the ASG also released Indonesian fishermen Lorence Koten, Teo Doros Kofong, and Emmanuel Arakian whom they kidnapped on July 9 at Lahad Datu, Sabah, in exchange for a P20-million ransom.
The Abu Sayyaf has attempted to portray itself as an Islamic militancy group with pretensions of establishing a caliphate within Southeast Asia, not unlike the Islamic State in the Middle East. Filemon Tan Jr. said the sustained military operations pressured the ASG to release its kidnap victims.
Abu Sayyaf beheaded the two Canadians it seized past year with Kjartan Sekkingstad, the first one in April and the other in June, after a deadline for the payment of ransom money lapsed.
Ridsdel was beheaded in April and Hall was decapitated in June after ransom deadlines lapsed.
The Philippine defence department has said there were no formal links between the group and the Islamic State which holds vast swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Since 1991, the Abu Sayyaf – armed with mostly improvised explosive devices, mortars and automatic rifles – has carried out bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and extortion in a self-determined fight for an independent province in the Philippines.
“Their return to the country will depend on the Foreign Affairs Ministry but I hope it will be soon”, Ryamizard said.
“If there is a family member or a third party who paid, we have no information, but as far as the gov’t is concern, we maintain a no ransom policy”, Andanar explained.
He was released to the MNLF that turned him over to Dureza and Tan on Sunday afternoon.
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.
Advertisement
The group has made tens of millions of dollars from ransom money since it was formed in the 1990s, security experts say, channeling it into guns, grenade launchers, high-powered boats and modern equipment.
