Indonesian seaman kidnappers go to ground

Indonesian seaman kidnappers go to ground

Agence France-Presse, Manila

Kidnappers holding three Indonesian seamen in the southern Philippines are lying low, with no ransom demands or claims of responsibility issued a week after the abductions, the defense department said on Monday.

"It's very unusual," department spokesman Melchor Rosales said on local television. "There has been no demand for anything" or even "any claim" for responsibility.

Gunmen believed to be Abu Sayyaf Muslim guerrillas boarded a tugboat hauling a coal-laden barge near the Abu Sayyaf stronghold of Basilan island on June 17 and seized the vessel's four Indonesian officers.

The second officer, Ferdinan Joel, escaped and reported the abductions to police on Jolo island, another Abu Sayyaf stronghold, two days later.

Rosales said that while Joel identified police mugshots of Hamsiraji Sali, leader of a Basilan-based Abu Sayyaf unit, the six other crewmen who were not abducted pointed to somebody else.

"It's not yet conclusive, but you have to put weight to Joel's testimony," Rosales said. "Therefore, the (Abu Sayyaf) group is suspect."

The gunmen are still holding the boat's skipper Muntu Jacobus Winowatan, chief officer Julkifli, and chief engineer Pieter Lerrech.

However, Rosales said he was not ruling out the possibility that the three could have been taken by other armed groups operating in the Jolo-Basilan region, which has been wracked by three decades of Muslim separatist rebellion.

"That (shipping) company was subjected to pirate attacks five years before," he said without elaborating.

In the past, the Abu Sayyaf have issued initial political demands, including swapping captives for Islamic militant Ramzi Youssef, serving a life term in the United States for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. However, they generally settled for cash ransoms.

The guerrilla group is linked to the al-Qaeda group, the main suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S.

On Friday the Philippine military claimed they killed senior Abu Sayyaf leader Abu Sabaya in a high seas shootout in the Sulu Sea. His body has not been found three days later, Rosales said.

Sabaya held hostage a U.S. Christian missionary couple for more than a year. The woman was rescued two weeks ago, but the husband and a Filipina captive were slain in a rescue attempt.