ZAMBOANGA CITY, 23 June 2005 — A Philippine court yesterday sentenced to death seven members of the Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group accused of kidnapping and killing ten people in the southern island of Basilan.
Most of those convicted did not show any sign of remorse, but some of their relatives wept silently and embraced each others as the verdict was being read inside a small but tightly guarded and jampacked courthouse in Isabela City, officials said.
Security officers praised the verdict and said justice has been finally served to families of ten farmers kidnapped and beheaded by the Abu Sayyaf in the village of Balobo in Lamitan town in August 2001.
Officials identified the seven bandits as Ibrahim Bowak, Muddas Sabinul, Abdulla Uwa, Daud Indaling, Etang Awal,Jimmy Teng and Janital Wahid. Under the law, those convicted would die by lethal injection.
The bandits, disguised as government soldiers, swooped down on the village and seized about three dozen people, including women and children, and then beheaded nine male captives and shot another hostage before they escaped to the jungle. The remaining hostages were either rescued by soldiers or had escaped.
from their captors, officials said. “Justice is now served and let this be a warning to all that crime does not pay,” said a former Basilan military commander Maj. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, now commander of the army’s elite Special Operation Command.
But Esperon said many former hostages are still afraid of the Abu Sayyaf despite the verdict and were appealing to the military to put up a detachment in Balobo village.”The trauma is still there and I hope time will erase this in their heart,” he said.
Esperon had led troops in fierce battle against the Abu Sayyaf and was instrumental in the rescue of many hostages on the island.
Aside from the Balobo kidnapping, Abu Sayyaf gunmen also raided the Golden Harvest farm in the village of Tairan in Lantawan town in June 2001 — torched10 houses and a Catholic church — and beheaded two of 15 men they abducted and made the others slaves and raped the women until rescued by the military in separate clashes three months later.
The Abu Sayyaf was also implicated in the kidnapping of 21 mostly Asian and European holiday-makers from the Malaysian island resort of Sipadan in April 2000. Many of the hostages later were freed after Libyan and Malaysian negotiators paid an estimated $11 million ransom.
Washington listed the Abu Sayyaf as a foreign terrorist organization after Manila implicated five of the group’s known leaders to the killing of Californian Guillermo Sobero in 2001 and Kansas missionary Martin Burnham in 2002.
