Canadians abducted by Islamic terrorists with guns

Locutus

Locutus

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I corrected the AP/NP headline for the uninformed as the MSM will steer clear of the implication during the election. It'll probably get all muddy, marginalized and misunderstood ya know.



Gunmen abduct two Canadians and two others from Philippine resort island



Unidentified gunmen have abducted two Canadians, a Norwegian resort manager and a Filipino woman from a southern Philippine island, the military and police said Tuesday.

Police have identified the Canadians as John Ridsel and Robert Hall, and the Norwegian as Kjartan Sekkingstad. The unidentified Filipino woman is the wife of one of the Canadians, said regional military spokesman Capt. Alberto Caber.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said the federal government is aware of reports that Canadians were kidnapped in the Philippines and is “pursuing all appropriate channels to seek further information.”

Caber said two Japanese resort guests unsuccessfully tried to intervene before the gunmen escaped with their hostages aboard a motorized outrigger from Samal Island off Davao City.

He also said the gunmen appeared to have specifically targeted the victims when they entered the Holiday Oceanview Samal Resort before midnight Monday on the northern tip of the island, about 975 kilometres southeast of Manila.

A naval blockade was set up around the island to stop the kidnappers from reaching Basilan Island farther to the southwest where the militants have strongholds where they keep hostages while negotiating ransoms, added Caber.

Senior Supt. Samuel Gandingan, chief of the Davao del Norte provincial police, told government radio station DXRP in Davao City that three men armed with rifles entered the resort before midnight Monday.

In 2001, Abu Sayyaf militants tried to seize hostages from the Pearl Farm Beach Resort south of Oceanview during a ransom-kidnapping spree in the early 2000s in the southernPhilippines.

They seized dozens of Filipino hostages on Basilan and 21 people, mostly European tourists, from the Malaysian resort of Sipadan in 2000, and abducted three Americans and 17 Filipinos in 2001 from the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan province, southwest of Manila.

The Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 gunmen, was recently declared a terrorist group by a Philippine court and is also on Washington’s list of terror organizations.

The militants are still holding other hostages, including two Malaysians, a Dutch bird watcher kidnapped nearly three years ago, and a town mayor.

With files from The Associated Press

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/gunmen-abduct-canadians-from-philippine-resort-island

http://www.nctc.gov/site/groups/asg.html
 
Locutus

Locutus

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or clocks.

mind you, more stupid people killed by selfies than ladders last year.
 
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Canadian hostages appear on video held at gunpoint


Two Canadians, a Norwegian and a Filipino have appealed by video to the Philippines to stop military operations, and to Canada to negotiate for their freedom with Islamist militants who abducted them.

The four were snatched at gunpoint by 11 men, believed to be al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants, at an upmarket resort on Samal island in the Philippines on Sept. 21 and taken to an unknown location in the south.

"Please, stop all these operations so that negotiations can start," said a man, who introduced himself as Canadian John Ridsdel, a former CBC Calgary reporter and retired CEO of mining company TVI Resource Development Philippines, on the clip circulating on YouTube, while a machete was brandished behind his head by a militant who was holding him.​

The man said there had been artillery fire nearby, flights overhead and bombings and asked that they be stopped.

The military operations could not be independently verified. Philippine authorities on Tuesday declined to comment on the video, saying they will have to validate the authenticity of the material.

Asked about the video, a Canadian foreign ministry spokesman said the government is "pursuing all appropriate channels to seek further information."

Another captive, who introduced himself as Canadian Robert Hall, also appealed to stop the bombings, saying his life was in grave danger.

"To my family and friends, I'm OK, but I'm in grave danger," Hall says. "I encourage you please to contact the Canadian government and ask them, plead with them, to co-operate with the Philippine government to stop the bombings and the problems that are going on here. I know there's people that can find a way to do this."

A third man who introduced himself as Kjartan Sekkingstad was also made to plead for their lives.

All of them were shown to be sitting in a jungle while the militants with covered faces held rifles and machetes, and shouted "Allahu akbar" [God is greatest] at the end of the two minute 22 second video uploaded onto YouTube.

The militants' leader spoke fluent English, demanding the artillery attacks be halted and the negotiation of the release of the hostages.
It is unusual for Islamist militant leaders in the south to speak good English. The video had been uploaded on some Middle Eastern websites.

The leader did not identify what group they belonged to or their location.

Canadian hostages appear on video held at gunpoint - World - CBC News
 
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Lee Humphrey, a Canadian security consultant, happened to be in the Philippines at the time to get a regular security assessment for one of his clients.

While meeting with local police and military authorities, Humphrey was asked about the small Canadian flag tattoo on his forearm. Soon, the officers were asking Humphrey whether he could get in touch with his government to give Canadian officials an update on the situation.

A former Canadian soldier, Humphrey had no contacts within government, so he sent along messages through tip lines and publicly available email addresses.

He wasn’t hopeful the message would get through.

In fact, he was deeply worried about the lack of communication between the two countries.

“This was not your everyday kidnap for ransom for a commercial purpose, where you’re going through a process, pay some money and everybody walks away,” says Humphrey.

Humphrey felt he should alert the government that Filipino authorities wanted to talk.

While the Trudeau government seemed to suggest nothing more could be done, security consultant Lee Humphrey says the Philippine military actually had a rescue operation ready to go.

Humphrey’s work had brought him back to the Philippines in February, which is when he learned that authorities had located the hostages. Using GPS tracking devices, satellite imagery and phone intercepts, authorities pinpointed the militants in a remote jungle camp on Jolo Island, more than 500 kilometres southwest from where Ridsdel, Hall and the others had been originally captured.

Humphrey says the Philippine military had drawn up a plan and identified a unit of 40 men who began detailed, mission-oriented training.

“By that point, [rescue] was the only option, as negotiations were simply not going to happen,” Humphrey says.

The Philippine military was waiting for a green light from the Canadian government. But given the terrain of dense and unknown jungle and the fact that the territory was controlled by Abu Sayyaf and its supporters, the Canadian government was not convinced a rescue operation would be successful.

For a risky operation such as this, the preference is to have family members reach a consensus. But the Ridsdels and the Halls could not agree on whether to go ahead with the mission.

And so it didn’t happen.

Early on the morning of April 25, they got their answer, via direct confirmation from the RCMP.

John Ridsdel had been beheaded. (Villagers had discovered his head on the streets of Jolo. His body was found in a nearby village days later.)

Abu Sayyaf released the graphic video recording of his horrific death on YouTube.

The news landed while the Trudeau government was in the middle of a cabinet retreat in Kananaskis, Alta.

Appearing before a black curtain and Canadian flags, the prime minister grimly confirmed the news to the nation.

“Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers in this unnecessary death,” said Trudeau.
Given that the other hostages were still in danger, he provided no other details.

John Ridsdel's daughters, extended family and friends began the painful process of moving from rescue to recovery. They pulled their money from the ransom pool, coordinated with the embassy in Manila to bring John’s remains back to Canada and focused on grieving.

They also asked the RCMP to stop giving them regular updates on the situation. It had become too much to bear.

Bonice Thomas says it took several days to determine whether her brother Robert was still alive.

Filled with dread, the Hall family made several desperate suggestions to the RCMP for how to resolve the situation.

Had the Mounties reached out to religious leaders in the area to try and influence the captors? Thomas asked.

The RCMP replied that it was a good idea.

That response knocked the wind out of Thomas.

“I just thought, How can you only be thinking of this eight and a half months in? This should have been one of the first strategies or suggestions that we go after, you know?” she says.

“It was really very disheartening, and the hopelessness really sort of started to take hold then. It was just — we got nothing.”

Their families were angry, frustrated and left pondering what more they could have done.

They also wondered what more their government could have done.

Somehow, the other hostages had escaped Ridsdel and Hall’s fate.

Marites Flor was released in June — simply abandoned on the street. It was never clear why, or whether a ransom was paid for her freedom.

videos

Kept in the dark
 
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ISLAMIC MILITANTS IN the Philippines have beheaded the German hostage they were holding for ransom, the government in Manila said today.

A video posted by the extremist Abu Sayyaf group, which was monitored by intelligence group SITE, showed Jurgen Kantner being killed by a knife-wielding man.

Shortly after the video appeared, government envoy Jesus Dureza confirmed the German’s death.

“We grieve as we strongly condemn the barbaric beheading of yet another kidnap victim,” Dureza said in a statement.

“Up to the last moment, many sectors including the Armed Forces of the Philippines exhausted all efforts to save his life. We all tried our best. But to no avail,” said Dureza.

Military officials in the south said they still had not yet found the German’s body.

The Abu Sayyaf, blamed for the worst terror attacks in Philippine history, had previously demanded a ransom of 30 million pesos (€560,000) be paid by yesterday to spare the 70-year-old.

Kantner was abducted from his yacht, the Rockall, in waters off the southern Philippines last year.

The vessel was found drifting on 7 November, with the body of Kantner’s female companion, Sabine Merz, bearing a gunshot wound.

The couple had previously been kidnapped and held for 52 days in Somalia in 2008 before they were freed, reportedly after a huge ransom was paid, press reports said.

The Abu Sayyaf, whose leaders have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State movement in the Middle East, have been kidnapping foreigners and Christians for decades, holding them for ransom in the jungles of the strife-torn southern Philippines.

They have frequently killed hostages if their demands are not met, and last year murdered two Canadians.

Aside from Kantner, they are now holding at least 19 foreigners and seven Filipino hostages, military spokesman Brigadier General Restituto Padilla said.

The group, formed from seed money provided by a relative of Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, also carried out the bombing of a ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 that claimed 116 lives in the country’s deadliest terror attack.

The military had been pressing an assault against the Abu Sayyaf, attacking their camps and bombing their hideouts just before Kantner was killed.

German hostage beheaded by Islamist militants in the Philippines
 
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