Suspect Arrested in Philippine Abductions Involving Two Canadians

The Globe and Mail (Canada)

06 October 2015

Philippine authorities have arrested a suspect in the abduction of four people, two of them Canadian, from a yacht marina in the country’s south, amid fears about the region becoming an Asian nexus for attacks by extremists linked to the Islamic State.

The suspect, a man named Pandajar Adona, was identified through security camera footage at the Holiday Oceanview Samal, an island resort where 11 gunmen seized the sailors late on Sept. 21, Rodrigo Duterte, the law-and-order mayor of nearby Davao City, told local media. A second suspect has also been identified, he said, but no group has yet stepped forward to take responsibility, and no ransom demand has been made.

Two of those abducted, Robert Hall and John Ridsdel, are Canadian; friends have said a third man, identified by authorities as Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad, also carries a Canadian passport. The fourth person, Maritess Flor, is a Filipina in a relationship with Robert Hall.

… In Indonesia, “jihadists are really plugged into the jihadi literature,” said Joseph Franco, a former Philippines military researcher who is now an associate research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where he specializes in Philippine militant groups. “But you look over to the Philippines, there’s no ideological development. There’s no effort to indigenize the narratives from the Middle East.”

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