Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...holding firm. Arroyo, say her advisers, wants to keep Abu Sayyaf on the run. The last time the group took hostages from a tourist resort?21 were seized in April last year on Sipadan, a famous diving site on the Malaysian coast?they collected an estimated $25 million in ransom. But even before the Sipadan raid, the name Abu Sayyaf raised alarm among Western intelligence agencies. Abu Sayyaf kept surfacing in connection with various plots by Islamic terrorist Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, now serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City. Both Yousef...
...already dead, of course. That sad news had been known from the beginning. Huang's tormentors, you see, were not members of some professional kidnapping-for-ransom gang. They were morticians?employees of one of the hundreds of companies that compete for market share in Taiwan's bizarre and unruly funeral industry. In Europe and the U.S., "death care" is a multibillion-dollar business, dominated by colossal corporations with stock-market listings, ISO ratings, and executives recruited from leading business schools. It's a big industry in Taiwan too (residents spend around $3 billion a year on funerals...
...Sulu islands, is led by Galib Andang, nicknamed Commander Robot for the mechanical way he dances. Addicted to shabu (methamphetamines) and married to at least two of his female ex-kidnap victims, Andang directed the Sipadan raid. He is also known to be generous: so much of the Sipadan ransom spilled over onto his native island Jolo that the dollar fell among local traders from 50 pesos to 25. Another Sulu island commander is Raddulan Sahirun. In his 60s, Raddulan wears two revolvers around his waist like a fast-draw artist, even though he is missing an arm. Manila Security...
...year ago, the same group of Muslim rebels kidnapped 21 people, including 9 Malaysians, 8 Europeans, 2 South Africans and 2 Filipinos, from the eastern Malaysian diving resort of Sipadan. Over the following four months, they auctioned them off for a whispered total of up to $25 million in ransom money. Bad enough that it happened again: even more frightening, it was clear from day one of the most recent crisis that the resolution would be swifter and a lot more brutal. Over the past year, the rebels spent their ill-gotten riches on firepower: M-16s, Uzis, mortars, cannons...
...concerns. The Philippines has a new President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and she announced from the start that she had no intention of suffering the humiliation dealt predecessor Joseph Estrada last year. Estrada succumbed to Malaysian and European pleas to hold the troops back and allowed Libya to broker a ransom deal. As a result, the ragtag band of one year ago has grown into a kidnapping army that can only get more audacious with every success. With Washington's backing, Arroyo refused all negotiation and ordered 5,000 troops into the scattered Sulu archipelago to, in the words of operational...