A school official who was among three people held hostage by suspected Islamist militants in a lawless region of the Philippines has been released unharmed, a local official said yesterday.
The circumstances surrounding the release of Orlando Fajardo, the vice president of a college who was abducted at his home in southern Basilan island two weeks ago were unclear, with the country’s largest Muslim separatist guerrilla group claiming credit.
Al-Rasheed Sakalahul, vice-governor of Basilan Province, told reporters he personally picked up the former hostage at a mountainous area late on Christmas Eve.
“It’s a good Christmas present. We have now in our possession Doctor Fajardo,” Sakalahul said.
Three other people, including two employees of a lumber yard are still held hostage in Basilan by suspected Abu Sayyaf militants, who had beheaded another hostage earlier this month.
Fajardo’s kidnappers had initially sought 20 million pesos (US$430,000) in exchange for his liberty, but Sakalahul later said no ransom was paid and that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) helped him convince the gunmen to free him.
“The MILF secured the release of Mr Fajardo and handed him over to me. There was no ransom paid and the release was made possible through the help of the MILF,” he said.
Eid Kabalu, spokesman for the separatist group that is holding peace talks with the Philippine government, said: “We have been helping the government secure the release of kidnap victims through the ad-hoc joint action group.”
The liaison group is a mechanism set up after a 2004 truce under which the MILF committed to help the government stamp out terrorism and crime in areas the insurgents controlled.
Basilan gunmen are still holding lumber firm workers Michael Tan and Oscar Lu who were both kidnapped last month, and another local, Donald John Capili, who was abducted in October.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS