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Philippines nabs suspect over last year's beheadings

Police and troops captured a suspected member of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group wanted in connection with the beheading of 10 marines in the southern Philippines last year, officials said yesterday.

Aramil Sulayman, 29, was working as a pedicab driver when security officers arrested him on Saturday in Datu Odin Sinsuat township in southern Shariff Kabunsuan Province, national police chief Avelino Razon told reporters.

A handcuffed Sulayman wearing an orange detainee shirt was presented to the media yesterday but he was not allowed to talk.

The government offered a 500,000 peso (US$12,240) bounty for the arrest of Sulayman, one of 128 militants identified by police informants in connection with the deadly ambush on Basilan island, Razon said.

All 128 suspects have been charged with murder and attempted murder, but Sulayman is only the second of them to be arrested.

The July 10 attack left 14 marines dead, including 10 who were beheaded -- a signature tactic of the Abu Sayyaf. The group's killings, bombings and kidnappings shape its campaign to set up an Islamic caliphate in the southern Philippines.

"We have been monitoring the activities of about 100 suspects over the past several months," police Senior Superintendent Leonardo Espina said. "We are actually hot on their toes."

US-backed troops arrested another suspect in the beheadings, Atin Madjakin, alias Jing Amilul, in Basilan's Tipo-Tipo township in October.

Since the ambush, more than 50 other troops have been killed in clashes with Muslim militants.

Battle setbacks, arrests and surrenders have reduced the Abu Sayyaf's guerrilla strength to about 300 armed men from more than a 1,000 during its heyday in 2000, according to the military.

Abu Sayyaf, which no longer routinely makes comments on the military's claims, is blacklisted by Washington as a terrorist organization.
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