MANILA: Two Europeans, who were seized by gunmen in February while bird watching, have been seen recently in the custody of Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants in their jungle stronghold in the southern Philippines, officials said Tuesday.
Senior Superintendent Antonio Freyra said without elaborating that Ewold Horn of the Netherlands and Lorenzo Vinciguerra of Switzerland were seen with Abu Sayyaf gunmen more than a month ago in the jungle off mountainous Patikul town in Sulu province. The two were abducted in the southernmost province of Tawi Tawi, near Sulu, where Abu Sayyaf has survived mostly on banditry and ransom kidnapping.
Police initially believed the two were seized by ordinary kidnap gangs.
Two military and police officers said intelligence showed that the European hostages were being moved by their armed captors from time to time in jungle encampments in Patikul and nearby Talipao town. The two officers spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Aside from the Europeans, the militants were believed to be holding a Japanese treasure hunter, along with a Jordanian TV journalist and two Filipino crewmen who reportedly traveled to Abu Sayyaf encampments in Sulu to interview the militants in June but have failed to return.
While Abu Sayyaf abductions still occur, they are far fewer today than the massive kidnappings that terrorized Sulu and outlying provinces in early 2000 when the brutal group still had many commanders and had strong ties with terrorist groups like the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah.
The Abu Sayyaf — or Bearer of the Sword — was founded in 1991 in predominantly Muslim Basilan province near Sulu. With an unwieldy collective of preachers and outlaws, it vowed to wage jihad, or holy war, but lost its key leaders early in combat, sending it on a violent path of extremism and criminality.
An Indian who escaped last week from his Abu Sayyaf captors after more than a year of jungle captivity in Sulu told police investigators that he was held by the gunmen near Patikul and did not meet the Europeans or any other foreign hostages, Freyra said.
The US military deployed troops to the southern Philippines in 2002 to provide combat training, intelligence and drone surveillance to Filipino troops battling the Abu Sayyaf, which has an armed force of nearly 400 men. The American deployment then was sparked by the Abu Sayyaf’s kidnapping of three Americans, two of whom were killed while in the militants’ custody.
