Military says boat used to ferry Samal hostages
THE military bolstered fears on Saturday that the four foreigners and a Filipino who were kidnapped from a Samal Island resort on Sept. 21 has slipped a security dragnet in Eastern Mindanao and are now in Western Mindanao.
Brig. Gen. Alan
Arrojado, commander of Joint Task Group Sulu, said the authorities found a boat
they suspect was used by kidnappers to take the victims to an island stronghold
of Islamic militants.
The outrigger
boat was found Friday on Jolo, more than 500 kilometers southwest of the Samal Island
Jolo is the main
base of the Abu Sayyaf, an Al-Qaeda-linked group that has been blamed for the
Asian country’s deadliest terror attacks as well as ransom kidnappings of
foreign tourists and Christian missionaries.
“We have
eyeballed the seacraft, but not the kidnap victims from Samal,” Arrojado, head
of a Jolo counter-terrorism task force, told reporters.
Officials would
not say if the discovery pointed to possible Abu Sayyaf involvement in the
kidnapping of Canadian tourists John Ridsdel, 68, and Robert Hall, 50, as well
as Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad and Hall’s Filipina girlfriend,
Marites Flor.
No group has
claimed responsibility for the abductions, the latest in Mindanao, a southern
region plagued by decades of Muslim as well as communist insurgencies.
Arrojado said the
25-meter (82-foot) boat suspected of taking the hostages to Jolo was found
abandoned at Parang, a coastal town.
It was fitted
with two onboard engines, but was taking in water apparently from a breach on
its hull, he added.
Regional police
spokesman Antonio Rivera told AFP that of all the “threat groups” in the south,
those based on Jolo were the ones most skilled in using boats.
However, he
added: “We cannot say that they [Abu Sayyaf] are involved at this time.”
The authorities
earlier said they had received reports the kidnappers had taken their victims
to the impoverished Davao Oriental region to the east of Samal.
However, Rivera
told AFP Saturday “no boat was seen there [Davao Oriental] contrary to what was
earlier reported.”
Jolo-based Abu
Sayyaf and several other renegade Muslim rebel groups have in recent years
collaborated in kidnapping foreigners elsewhere in the south, with the victims
eventually taken to back to Jolo, security analyst Rodolfo Mendoza told AFP.
“They have done
it not only on western Mindanao [including Jolo] but they are now also doing it
on the eastern Mindanao side,” said Mendoza, president of the Manila
think tank Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism.
Supporting the
theory that the kidnappers and their victims are now in Western
Mindanao , Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said he received
information that the hostages were taken from Holiday Ocean Resort on a
pumpboat and were transferred to a larger and faster motorized boat.
The mayor said
the group passed by Glan, Sarangani and from there, took only six hours to
reach Sulu.
The pumpboats
were found Tuesday, hundreds of kilometers southeast of the Davao Oriental
province. Duterte declined to identify the group responsible for taking the
four tourists at gunpoint.
He instead said
that the armed men may be linked to the Abu Sayyaf Group as one of them appears
to resemble a known member of the terror group, based on the resort’s
closed-circuit television footage.
“They [victims]
were delivered to a known Abu Sayyaf Group. Whether they are also actually Abu
Sayyaf members, that we do not know. Ganyan ‘yan eh, ipasa-pasa na ‘yan, so as
they are passed on to a new group, lalaki nang lalaki yung patong nila sa
ransom,” Duterte said.
Duterte believes
it is probable that the abduction had been deliberate and that the suspects
knew their target.
“We have this
hanging suspicion that the hostages are pre-determined victims,” he said.
http://manilastandardtoday.com/2015/09/27/-taken-to-sulu-/
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