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Sunday, November 26, 2006
Sayyaf 'executioner' recaptured
ZAMBOANGA -- Military forces recaptured late Friday an Abu Sayyaf leader who helped detained the Burnham couple and allegedly decapitated American hostage Guillermo Sobero in 2001, the military said Saturday.
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Annik Abbas, a member of the feared Abu Sayyaf group, was arrested at a military roadblock on the island province of Basilan on Friday night after a government informant identified him, said Major Eugene Batara, spokesman for the military's Southwestern Command.
Abbas was arrested in 2002 for alleged involvement in the abduction of about 50 pupils and teachers in Basilan two years earlier. He joined a mass jailbreak from the Basilan provincial prison in 2004.
According to Basilan Governor Wahab Akbar, Abbas was the executioner of Sobero of California. Sobero was among the 21 foreigners taken from Dos Palmas resort in Palawan during the bandits' 2001 raid.
Together with Sobero were US missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham and 17 Filipinos in Palawan.
Martin Burnham was later killed during a military rescue while Gracia was wounded.
Troops took him on Saturday to nearby Zamboanga City, where he was presented to journalists with his forehead bandaged and his right eye and cheeks swollen.
Asked if soldiers had beaten him, Abbas nodded to reporters, but Basilan army commander Colonel Reynald Ronnie Javier said Abbas was injured when he fell off a motorcycle while trying to evade the roadblock.
On Thursday, police killed an alleged Abu Sayyaf gunman and captured two others in a gunfight on Zamboanga city's outskirts.
The shootout erupted after the gunmen fired at police sent to arrest them.
Another gunman escaped during the fighting, said Superintendent Angelito Casimiro, chief of the regional police intelligence division.
Abu Sayyaf, on a US list of terror groups, is notorious for bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings.
Abu Sayyaf has suffered numerous arrests. Many of its key leaders have been killed in US-backed offensives in the south.
It has mounted a bombing and kidnapping campaign against Christian targets across the Philippines, including the firebombing of a ferry on Manila Bay in February 2004 that claimed more than 100 lives and is considered the worst terrorist attack in the Philippines.
In Jolo, Sulu, military chief Hermogenes Esperon ordered soldiers on Friday to intensify the hunt for Khadaffy Janjalani, the chieftain of the Abu Sayyaf group tied to al-Qaeda, and his lieutenants, including two Jemaah Islamiya bombers Dulmatin and Umar Patek, both wanted by Indonesia for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people and the 2003 JW Mariot hotel bombing in Jakarta. (AP/Sunnex)For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star General Santos. (November 26, 2006 issue)
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