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Difference between revisions of "Zamboanga Sibugay News"
Zamboanga Sibugay News (view source)
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==Seized Australian lands in Abu Sayyaf hands== | |||
*Source: http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/news/regions/13568-seized-australian-lands-in-abu-sayyaf-hands | |||
*Tuesday, December 20, 2011 | |||
:by AL JACINTO CORRESPONDENT | |||
ZAMBOANGA CITY: Authorities said a kidnapped Australian is now being held by a notorious Abu Sayyaf group blamed for terrorism in Mindanao. | |||
Warren Rodwell, 53, was kidnapped from his home on December 5 in the town of Ipil in Zamboanga Sibugay province, about 120 kms east of here. | |||
“We have confirmation that Warren Rodwell is being held by the group of Abu Sayyaf leader Puruji Indama in Basilan province. We have stepped up efforts to locate Rodwell and his captors,” Army Colonel Ricardo Visaya, commander of the 104th Infantry Brigade, said. | |||
The military said that Rodwell was kidnapped by a local gang with links to the Abu Sayyaf in the Muslim province of Basilan. Police also linked Barahama Ali, a commander of the larger rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front which is currently negotiating peace with Manila, to the kidnapping. | |||
Visaya said they still do not know whether the two rebel groups had merged or if Rodwell was “sold” or handed over to the Abu Sayyaf. “We still don’t know whether the groups of Ali and Indama have merged or not, but Rodwell is now in the hands of Indama,” he said. | |||
Rodwell - a former soldier in the Australian army and a prolific world traveler – married a Filipina Miraflor Gutang, 27, in June in Ipil town weeks after the two met through the Internet. | |||
Gutang has appealed to the kidnappers to free her husband, saying he is not rich and ill, but she did not elaborate on his condition. | |||
Authorities have tagged Indama as behind the kidnapping of a US woman Gerfa Lunsmann and her son Kevin Eric, and a Filipino relative in July in Zamboanga City. The trio was released separately after the woman’s husband Heiko Lunsmann paid a huge ransom to the Abu Sayyaf. | |||
Indama was also blamed to numerous kidnappings in Basilan and Zamboanga City in recent years. Some of his victims were killed after their families failed to pay ransoms. | |||
His group was also tagged as behind the beheadings of civilians and government soldiers in clashes in Basilan, just several nautical miles south of Zamboanga City. | |||
The Abu Sayyaf, tied by the police and military to al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya, has kidnapped over a dozen people in the past years in the southern Philippines and is still holding an Indian, two Malaysians and a Japanese man. | |||
==Australian’s kidnappers posed as policemen – witnesses== | ==Australian’s kidnappers posed as policemen – witnesses== | ||
*Source: http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/news/regions/13424-australians-kidnappers-posed-as-policemen--witnesses | *Source: http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/news/regions/13424-australians-kidnappers-posed-as-policemen--witnesses | ||