Negotiations for the release of three foreigners and a Filipina kidnapped from a resort on Samal Island last month are reportedly underway after their captors established contact with a foreign embassy, an intelligence source said.
“We received a call from our contact within the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu that their leaders are now negotiating for the four hostages taken by the group from Samal Island last month,” the source, an officer based in Camp Crame who has consistently provided reliable information on condition he is not identified, said.
The Abu Sayyaf, he added, contacted the embassy and “they are now negotiating for the hostages’ safe release.”
He did not, however, provide more details.
Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad, Canadians John Ridsdel and Robert Hall, and Hall's Filipino partner Marites Flor, were seized from Samal on September 21.
Earlier, the source said the victims were immediately taken to Sulu by their abductors, supposedly a band led by Abu Sayyaf sub-leader Muammar Askali, the same group said to be behind the abduction of Germans Stefan Viktor Okonek and Henrite Dielen, who were seized off Palawan in April last year and freed in October, reportedly after a huge ransom payment.
The Samal hostages, said the source, are supposedly guarded by some 200 gunmen under several Abu Sayyaf commanders somewhere in Patikul, Sulu, although authorities have so far refused to confirm this.
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/118796/negotiations-on-for-samal-hostages-release---intelligence-source
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