Indonesian sailor escapes Abu Sayyaf

Indonesian sailor escapes Abu Sayyaf

Agencies, Zamboanga, Philippines

An Indonesian sailor held hostage for nine months on a southern Philippine island by the Moro extremist Abu Sayyaf group escaped from his captors and told the military on Friday that another Indonesian had apparently died of illness while in captivity.

The sailor, identified as Julkipli, told The Associated Press he escaped in the forests of Jolo, an Abu Sayyaf stronghold where he and two other Indonesians were kidnapped last year. He ran for three hours until he reached a battalion of Philippine marines late on Thursday.

The marines said they at first thought he was a rebel and Julkipli said he thought they were Abu Sayyaf guerrillas.

Julkipli, 27, said he was told by his captors that one of his colleagues had died from a lingering illness. He said he could not personally confirm their account. The Indonesian Embassy also said it could not confirm it.

Lt. Gen. Narciso Abaya, chief of the military's Southern Command, said Julkipli was able to escape because the rebels were going hungry because of continuous military pursuit.

"Even those who are guarding (the hostages) are already on low morale because they are not eating, they cannot sleep, they are always walking. So he was able to get a chance to escape," Abaya said.

"I am okay. But it's really hard to be in the mountains with the rebels," Julkipli said in halting English as he hobbled into a waiting ambulance shortly after he was airlifted to the regional military headquarters in Zamboanga.

"I feel happy. I ate plenty of bananas, fruits, fish," he said when asked how he survived his ordeal.

Before he was whisked away for a medical examination, he said he desperately wanted to talk to his family in Semarang, Central Java.

He said he was able to talk by telephone to his wife, whom he married just before he was kidnapped, and that she "just cried and cried".

The three Indonesian tugboat crewmen and four Filipino members of the evangelist group Jehovah's Witnesses were kidnapped separately on Jolo last year. The Indonesians were taken at gunpoint from a Singapore-owned tugboat on June 17 by 11 men in military fatigues riding in three speedboats off Jolo.

Two Filipino male evangelists were beheaded by the kidnappers in August, and the Abu Sayyaf - a group labeled terrorist by the United States for a series of kidnappings and beheadings - has threatened to kill the remaining victims if the military mounts a rescue operation.

Three years ago, Abu Sayyaf guerrillas crossed into neighboring Malaysia by boat and took 21 Western tourists and Asian workers from a dive resort. All but one were subsequently freed, reportedly in exchange for huge ransoms.

Other Abu Sayyaf rebels took 102 hostages, including three Americans, in a yearlong kidnapping spree.

The Abu Sayyaf has been loosely linked to al-Qaeda. A six- month U.S.-Philippine counterterrorism exercise last year on neighboring Basilan island has been credited with breaking up the extremist group and killing and capturing some leaders and members. Remnants of the group, including chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani, have fled farther south to Jolo island.

Abaya said there are about 400 Abu Sayyaf guerrillas left on Jolo.