ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / June 18, 2012) – Abu Sayyaf militants tied to al-Qaeda is reportedly holding a veteran Jordanian journalist and his two Filipino companions in the southern Philippine island of Sulu where they are to secretly meet with terror leaders.
Military intelligence reports said Baker Atyani, the Pakistan bureau chief of the Al-Arabiya TV, and Rolando Letrero and Ramelito Vela, are now in the custody of the Abu Sayyaf. It was not immediately known whether they had been taken hostage or still filming a documentary about the group.
The Abu Sayyaf is also harbouring Malaysian and Indonesian Jemaah Islamiya militants, blamed for the deadly 2002 Bali bombings.
But Senior Superintendent Antonio Freyra, the island’s police chief, insisted that Atyani and his news crew are still missing and that security forces are searching for them. “As far as we are concerned, they are still missing,” he said.
Atyani’s group was reported missing on June 12 after they failed to return to their hostel rooms in Jolo town. “The trio went out of their hostel in a private jeep early on that day and since then have not returned,” he told the Mindanao Examiner.
Atyani, who was a former bureau chief of the Middle East Broadcasting Company, had also secretly interviewed Al-Qaeda terror leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Al Arabiya is an Arabic-language television news station launched in March 2003 and is partly owned by the Saudi broadcaster Middle East Broadcasting Center. (Mindanao Examiner)
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