ZAMBOANGA CITY – Abu Sayyaf rebels killed a woman and snatched her German companion after attacking their yacht off Sabah in Malaysia, just several nautical miles from the southern Philippine border, Filipino security officials said on Monday.
Officials have identified the woman as Sabine Merz, who was in her 50s and companion as Jurgen Kantner, 70. Their yacht was recovered by security forces on Sunday drifting near Pangutaran Island off Sulu, one of 5 provinces under the restive Muslim autonomous region.
The boat was towed to the Port of Bongao in Tawi-Tawi province near Sabah, according to army Major Filemon Tan, a spokesman for the Western Mindanao Command.
He said the woman was naked when found in the boat could had been raped. A shotgun was also found near her body. “The cadaver sustained gunshot wounds and was discovered inside the yacht bearing a German flag with markings Rock All. A shotgun was also recovered besides the body. The body found was naked and had several contusions to the face and was possibly raped,” Tan said.
He said an Abu Sayyaf sub-leader, Muamar Askali, alias Aboo Rami, contacted a local media organization to say that they are holding Kantner. Askali did not say how much ransoms they wanted for the safe release of the hostage.
The Abu Sayyaf is still holding about a dozen Malaysian and Indonesian sailors kidnapped this year in Sabah. There was no immediate statement from the German embassy on the kidnapping of Kantner and the murder of Wetch.
In April 2014, Askali’s group also kidnapped two German yachters – Stefan Viktor Okonek, 71, and Henrike Diesen, 55, while heading to Sabah from a holiday in the Philippines. The duo was freed six months later after the German government paid P250 million ransoms delivered by Filipino security officials.
Rami originally demanded from Germany – on top of the ransoms – to cease all support to U.S. coalition campaign against ISIS which is fighting for Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The Abu Sayyaf had threatened to kill the German couple if the military launches a combat operation against the notorious group tied to the ISIS.
The Abu Sayyaf group, formed by Ustadz Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani in 1992, continues to recruit members to fight the government in their attempt to set up a strict Islamic state in Mindanao.
The group now has hundreds of members in the Muslim autonomous region and the military failed to stop the growing influence and violent campaigns of the rebel group because it did not sustain the combat operations needed to wipe out the Abu Sayyaf in the restive region. Much of the military’s huge budget goes to combat operations and its modernization program. (With a report from Ely Dumaboc)
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