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Two long-wanted Abu Sayyaf militant commanders accused of beheading two kidnapped Canadian vacationers and a German within the southern Philippines have surrendered to authorities, officers mentioned Friday.
Almujer Yadah and Bensito Quitino gave themselves as much as army officers in Jolo city in southern Sulu province and surrendered their assault rifles, Sulu army commander Maj. Gen. Ignatius Patrimonio and different safety officers mentioned. The officers didn’t present particulars of how and when the surrenders had been organized.
The 2 had been briefly offered in a information convention in a military camp in Jolo and later turned over to police.
Sulu provincial police chief Col. Jaime Mojica mentioned they are going to face a number of homicide and different legal fees, together with violation of the nation’s anti-terrorism legislation. The militants are accused of beheading the hostages after failing to acquire giant ransoms that they had demanded.
In addition they had been concerned in different ransom kidnappings and bomb assaults, Mojica mentioned.
Canadian vacationers Robert Corridor and John Ridsdel had been kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf gunmen from a marina on southern Samal island together with a Norwegian and a Filipino in September 2015 and brought to jungle camps in Sulu.
Corridor and Ridsdel had been beheaded by the militants months later after the deadline for cost of the ransoms handed. Movies launched by the militants confirmed the victims being brutally killed in entrance of an Islamic State group-style black flag. The Norwegian and Filipino hostages had been finally freed.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned on the time that he was horrified by the killings and affirmed Canada’s refusal to “pay ransoms for hostages to terrorist teams, as doing so would endanger the lives of extra Canadians.” He mentioned Canada was working with the Philippine authorities “to pursue these accountable for these heinous acts and produce them to justice, nonetheless lengthy it takes.”
Different key suspects within the kidnappings and killings of Corridor and Ridsdel had been killed earlier in clashes with Philippine forces.
Mojica mentioned the 2 militants had been additionally concerned within the 2017 beheading in Sulu of German hostage Jurgen Gustav Kantner. Abu Sayyaf gunmen seized Kantner at gunpoint and killed a lady crusing with him off neighboring Malaysia’s Sabah state. Villagers later discovered a useless girl on a yacht with a German flag off Sulu’s Laparan Island.
America and the Philippines have labeled the Abu Sayyaf a terrorist group for kidnappings, beheadings and bombings. The small however brutal group emerged within the early Nineteen Nineties as an extremist offshoot of a decades-long Muslim separatist rebel within the southern Philippines, the homeland of minority Muslims within the largely Roman Catholic nation.
The group “has dedicated kidnappings-for-ransom, bombings, ambushes of safety personnel, public beheadings, assassinations, and extortion,” in keeping with the U.S. State Division.
In 2019, Abu Sayyaf militants attacked Philippine troopers on Jolo, ensuing within the deaths of two kids, the State Division mentioned. That very same 12 months, the group two British nationals from a seaside resort, however they had been later rescued.
The Abu Sayyaf has been weakened significantly by a long time of army offensives, surrenders and infighting, and is at the moment estimated by the army to have lower than 200 armed fighters, however stays a nationwide safety menace.
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