Word: basilan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...they arrested two senior members of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf rebel group accused of kidnapping, murder and connections to bomb blasts in the city of General Santos last month. Officals said Salih Abdullah was an intelligence officer for the group, while Satar Yacub had been based on Basilan Island, where rebels are holding two U.S. citizens hostage. Earlier in the week, the group threatened to kill the couple, saying negotiations were closed...
...special forces are on Basilan Island training Philippine soldiers to hunt down the Abu Sayyaf Group, a terrorist gang holding three hostages, including two U.S. missionaries. Green Berets and Philippine Scout Rangers are watching the gang and may try a rescue soon. But the joint exercises are just a warm-up. Abu Sayyaf is more a gang of local kidnappers than a global Islamist terrorist organization. But two larger groups linked to al-Qaeda are in the Philippines. Better-trained soldiers and intelligence agents could help contain al-Qaeda operations inside the country and in nearby Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia...
...Sayyaf Group: Founded by a Philippine veteran of the Afghan-Soviet War, Abu Sayyaf has devolved into armed bandits who specialize in kidnapping. Eighty of the guerrillas are on Basilan Island. Roughly 150 more are on nearby Jolo Island...
Second, Daschle’s concern that we’re somehow forgetting about al Qaeda is similarly misguided. Right now, 160 U.S. Special Forces troops are training local soldiers in the Basilan island jungle of the Philippines to combat a Muslim rebel group—Abu Sayyaf—that has kidnapped an American missionary couple. Abu Sayyaf is part of the Southeast Asian wing of al Qaeda. By disabling Abu Sayyaf’s training camps and eradicating their power base in the southern Philippines, U.S. troops are preventing the growth of al Qaeda in the Pacific...
...local wives and children. Masrie came to the Philippines in 1990 to study computer programming. In late 1994 he married. By then, according to Philippine intelligence reports, he had linked up with Ramzi Yousef who was in the Philippines between late 1994 and January 1995 training Abu Sayyaf on Basilan and later hatching the Bojinka Plot. That plot got busted on Jan. 6, 1995, when a chemical fire broke out in one of the bombmakers' apartments. Yousef fled Manila but was eventually picked up in Pakistan and sent for trial in the U.S. Masrie was detained in a general crackdown...