Manila, Philippines –
Two long-wanted Abu Sayyaf extremist commanders accused of beheading two abducted Canadian tourists and a German in the southern Philippines have surrendered to authorities, officials said on Friday.
Almuher Yada and Bensito Quitino surrendered to military personnel in the southern province of Jolo and surrendered their assault rifles, Sulu military commander Major General Ignatius Patrimonio and other security officials said. Officials did not provide details on how and when the broadcast was arranged.
The two were briefly introduced at a press conference at an army camp in Jolo and later handed over to police.
Sulu police chief Colonel Jaime Mojika said he would face numerous murders and other criminal charges, including violating the country’s anti-terrorism laws. The extremists are accused of beheading the hostages after failing to get the large ransoms they demanded.
They have also been involved in other ransom kidnappings and bombings, Mojika said.
Canadian tourists Robert Hall and John Riddell were abducted by armed men from Abu Sayyaf from a marina on the southern island of Samal along with a Norwegian and a Filipino in September 2015 and taken to camps in the Sulu jungle.
Hall and Riddell were beheaded by extremists months after the ransom deadline expired. Videos released by the extremists show that the victims were brutally killed in front of a black Islamic State-style flag. The Norwegian and Filipino hostages were eventually released.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the time that he was horrified by the killings and reaffirmed Canada’s refusal to “pay ransoms for hostages of terrorist groups, as this would endanger the lives of more Canadians.” He said Canada was working with the Philippine government “to prosecute those responsible for these heinous acts and bring them to justice, no matter how long it takes.”
Other key suspects in the abductions and killings of Hall and Riddell had been killed earlier in clashes with Philippine forces.
Mojika said the two extremists also took part in the 2017 beheading of German hostage Jürgen Gustav Kantner in Sulu. Abu Sayyaf’s gunmen targeted Kantner and killed a woman sailing with him from the neighboring Malaysian state of Sabah. Villagers later found a dead woman on a German-flagged yacht off Laparan Island in Sulu.
The United States and the Philippines have identified Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organization for kidnappings, beheadings and bombings. The small but brutal group emerged in the early 1990s as an extremist offshoot of a decades-long Muslim separatist uprising in the southern Philippines, home to the Muslim minority in the predominant Roman Catholic nation.
Abu Sayyaf has been significantly weakened by decades of military offensives, surrenders and clashes, and the military currently says there are fewer than 200 armed fighters, but a threat to national security remains.
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