Word: sayyaf
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...Lebanese were herded onto the boats with nine Malaysian and two Filipino resort workers. Under cover of darkness they were taken to Jolo island, in the southern Philippines, about an hour away. For days the captors' identity was a mystery, with speculation running from plain pirates to Abu Sayyaf, the most feared Muslim rebel group in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines. At midweek the Philippine Defense Secretary confirmed that the hostages were being held by Galib Andang, a.k.a. "Commander Robot," the Abu Sayyaf leader on Jolo and perpetrator of other kidnappings. He wanted a multimillion-dollar ransom. Late...
...tourists were now linked to a crisis in the southern Philippines. A month earlier, Abu Sayyaf fighters had kidnapped 53 people, including 22 children, from schools on Basilan Island, 50 miles northeast of Jolo. They demanded that the Philippine government persuade U.S. President Bill Clinton to release Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, who is serving a life-plus-240-year sentence in Colorado. When Philippine President Joseph Estrada rejected the demand, the rebels announced that they had beheaded two hostages. Estrada ordered his military to launch an assault on the Abu Sayyaf camp...
...Philippines government isn't interested in paying. But the multinational makeup of the hostages has raised the pressure on Manila to do whatever it can to avoid bloodshed. With no solution in sight a week after the latest hostage drama began, and government forces having overrun the Abu Sayyaf base on Basilian (and failed to find the student hostages), obstacles to a peaceful outcome may be mounting...
...within spitting distance of one another, TV crews and photographers have had access to the hostages, showing images of the 10 captives from Europe, Lebanon, South Africa and Malaysia pleading for the Philippines army to back off and negotiate a solution. That might be difficult, however, since the Abu Sayyaf group holding the hostages hasn't made a clear set of demands, prompting the government's appointed mediator to threaten to withdraw...
...Malaysia and South Africa. But if they had managed to hold onto the two Americans who escaped during the raid on the Sipadan resort, that might have tempted the kidnappers to aim high in their demands. Although the kidnappers have issued no demands as yet, in previous kidnappings Abu Sayyaf has made demands ranging from insisting that the government include a popular local Muslim film star on its negotiating team (a demand that was met) to a call for the release of imprisoned World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and others convicted of terrorism in the U.S. The group also...