http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/11/200911933934578674.html
Monday, November 09, 2009
17:35 Mecca time, 14:35 GMT
Philippines teacher beheaded
A school teacher abducted in the southern Philippines last month has been
beheaded by his kidnappers, local police have said.
The severed head of Gabriel Canizares, 36, was found in a bag at a petrol
station on Jolo Island on Monday, three weeks after he was seized by suspected
Abu Sayyaf fighters.
The rest of his body has not been found.
Canizares was kidnapped on October 18 when armed men held up a busload of
teachers near the Jolo town of Patikul.
The Abu Sayyaf later reportedly demanded a two-million-peso ($42,000)
ransom, which his relatives refused to pay.
"We shall make them pay for the enormity of this savagery"
Lorelei Fajardo,
Philippine presidential spokesman
The Abu Sayyaf is listed as a terrorist group by the Philippine and US
governments, both of whom suspect it has ties to al-Qaeda.
It is thought to have about 400 fighters based on Jolo and nearby Basilan
Island.
The group has become notorious for a string of kidnappings for ransom,
beheadings, and deadly bomb attacks, including the 2004 bombing of a ferry in
Manila Bay which killed 100 people.
Recent months have seen the Abu Sayyaf step up its attacks, despite an
intense campaign against them by the Philippines military supported by advisors
from the US.
Following the discovery of Canizares' severed head on Monday, Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo, the Philippines president, ordered the military and police to
put an end to the Abu Sayyaf's "heinous and inhumane atrocities".
"We shall make them pay for the enormity of this savagery," her
spokeswoman Lorelei Fajardo said.
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