The ransom had changed hands and a day had passed, but Australian Warren Rodwell remained in the Abu Sayyaf’s hands. Basilan Vice Gov. Al Rasheed Sakalahul felt he had been duped and he wanted to unleash hell on the kidnappers.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on Sunday that 52 Filipinos caught up in the Algerian hostage crisis had been accounted for, but it was still not known whether any Philippine nationals were among the dead.
In a bloody finale, Algerian special forces stormed a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert on Saturday to end a standoff with Islamist extremists that left at least 19 hostages and 29 militants dead. Dozens of foreign workers remain unaccounted for, leading to fears the death toll could rise.
There are reports that Jordanian journalist Baker Abdulla Atyani was finally allowed to leave the Abu Sayyaf camp on Thursday but he decided to stay when the Islamist extremists would not release his two Filipino cameramen, a civil society organization leader said Friday.
Interior Secretary Jesse M. Robredo on Saturday confirmed that veteran TV journalist Baker Atyani of Al Arabiya and his two Filipino cameramen were being held hostage somewhere in the jungles of Sulu by suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf.
An Indonesian militant was convicted of helping to build the massive car bomb used in the deadly 2002 Bali nightclub attacks and sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday, concluding the trial for the case’s last main defendant.
A top Indonesian terror suspect captured in the Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was later killed insists he was unaware of the al-Qaida leader’s presence there, according to the video of his interrogation obtained by The Associated Press.
The Philippine military said Friday Malaysia would send forensics experts in an effort to obtain proof that Filipino forces had killed three of Southeast Asia’s most-wanted terror suspects.
