DEFENSE Secretary Delfin Lorenzana will be meeting with the defense ministers of Malaysia and Indonesia next week to discuss mutual concerns, particularly the Abu Sayyaf problem in Mindanao.
“Sometime next week I’ll be travelling to Malaysia to meet with my counterparts, the Minister of Defense of Indonesia and the Minister of Defense of Malaysia. We will again talk about [the Abu Sayyaf] because we should address that worsening problem,” Lorenzana said.
Lorenzana said the meeting is set next week in Malaysia where they will fine-tune plans and agree on coordination processes and joint border patrol operations.
He said the meeting will be focusing on what framework to follow, concrete steps to make, and most importantly, to implement such plans, which in principle has been agreed upon in meetings with the previous administration.
Lorenzana said it is already the 1975 Philippine-Indonesian Border Patrol Agreement which would be the basis for the joint border patrol talk between the two countries, and the recent one with Malaysia.
Because of the upsurge of incidents of kidnappings by the terrorist Abu Sayyaf, the military has poured in more troops in Basilan and Sulu to neutralize the terrorist group.
Recently, the world was stunned when the Abu Sayyaf beheaded two Canadian captives—John Ridsdel and Robert Hall —after their families failed to deliver the P300-million ransom the bandits had been demanding.
Hall’s Filipina fiancé, Marites Flor, was released unharmed though amid allegations of ransom payment but the Abu Sayyaf has still in their hands Kjartan Sekkingstad, a Norwegian.
The four were abducted by armed men in September 2015 at a resort in the Island Garden City of Samal and brought them to Sulu.
Aside from Sekkignstad, the terror group has other local and foreign captives, including a Dutch man identifeid as Elwood Horn.