TEN Indonesian sailors abducted by Abu Sayyaf bandits were freed Sunday after five weeks in captivity, police said Sunday.
Unknown men dropped off the 10 tugboat crewmen at the home of Sulu Gov. Abdusakur Tan II on the remote island of Jolo during a heavy midday downpour, Jolo police chief Junpikar Sitin said.
“The report [of their release] is confirmed. They were there. I saw them,” Sitin added.
The condition of the former captives was not immediately known, though Sitin said the group ate lunch at the governor’s home.
They were abducted on March 26 by gunmen described as members of the Abu Sayyaf, a gang of bandits based in Jolo and nearby Basilan island that has been involved in kidnappings and deadly bombings.
The bandits are reported to have sought a ransom, but Sitin said he was unaware that any had been paid. Abu Sayyaf does not normally free hostages unless a ransom is paid.
The Indonesians were freed six days after Abu Sayyaf members beheaded a Canadian hostage, John Ridsdel.
President Benigno Aquino III vowed Wednesday to neutralize the bandits after Ridsdel’s decapitated head was left outside a government building in Jolo.
The authorities said the group is still holding 11 other foreign hostages—four Indonesians, four Malaysians, another Canadian, a Norwegian, and a Dutchman.
Military officials said they had no information about the release of the Indonesians.
“It’s better if you talk to the local police,” said Armed Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla.
“That was a local government effort. We don’t have any information,” said public affairs officer Col. Noel Detoyato.
On the ground, Western Mindanao Command spokesman Maj. Felimon Tan Jr. said he had no details either. “Our attention has been focused on ongoing military operations,” he said.
Abu Sayyaf is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency.
It is believed to have just a few hundred militants but has withstood repeated US-backed military offensives against it, surviving by using the mountainous, jungle terrain of Jolo and nearby islands to its advantage.
Abu Sayyaf gangs have earned many millions of dollars from kidnapping foreigners and locals since the early 1990s.
Although Abu Sayyaf’s leaders have pledged allegiance to Islamic State, analysts say they are more focused on lucrative kidnappings-for-ransom than setting up an Islamic caliphate.
Police on Thursday raided a hideout of the Ansar Khilafa Philippines group in the coastal town of Maasim, killing two fighters, a police report said Saturday.
The commandos recovered a cache of weapons including a sniper rifle, two carbines, rocket-propelled grenades, materials for making improvised bombs and a black flag of the IS group.
However, the target of the raid, the group’s leader, Mohammad Jaafar Maguid, escaped, the report added.
The AKP is one of several militant Muslim groups in Mindanao that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Authorities have said these groups have no direct link to IS and are merely using its name to gain prestige locally and in the hope of gaining the international jihadi group’s support and funding.