ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Mar. 31, 2014) – Five masked gunmen believed to be members of the notorious Abu Sayyaf group have seized a school principal on Monday in the restive Muslim province of Basilan in the southern Philippines, police and military authorities said.
It said the rebels flagged down a passenger jeep at Sitio Mompol in the village of Libug in Sumisip town and forcibly took the 60-year old Benita Enriquez Latonio, of the Manggal Elementary School. The jeep was travelling for Isabela City with other passengers when gunmen flagged down the vehicle and seized the victim.
No individual or group claimed responsibility for the latest abduction in Basilan, one of five provinces under the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, but intelligence reports suggest the involvement of Abu Sayyaf leader Juhaibel Alamsirul.
The motive of the abduction is still unknown, but police and military have tagged the Abu Sayyaf in many cases of ransom kidnappings. The group has been raising money through kidnappings for the purchase of weapons and to fund future terror attacks.
Authorities have repeatedly linked the Abu Sayyaf to al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya which had been blamed in deadly attacks not only in the Philippines, but also in Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia in an effort to establish a regional Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia.
Just recently, Abu Sayyaf rebels attacked a marine post in Bungkaung village in southern Philippine town of Patikul, triggering a firefight with troops that injured three civilians.
The Abu Sayyaf, founded in 1991 by Ustadz Abdurajak Janjalani in Basilan province, has been blamed for the spate of terrorism and ransom kidnappings in the southern Philippines. Many of its members now are young men and sons and relatives of original Abu Sayyaf fighters who had been fighting for a separate Islamic state in the country.
Janjalani was killed in 1998 in a firefight with policemen in Basilan and his younger brother Khadaffy took over the Abu Sayyaf, but he too, was slain in 2006 in Sulu’s Patikul town. His death fragmented the Abu Sayyaf into several factions in the South with different leaders operating autonomously from each other. (Ely Dumaboc)
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