JOLO, Philippines (AFP) — The head of a foreign man was dumped on a remote southern Philippine island on Monday, authorities said, hours after a ransom deadline passed for two Canadians and a Norwegian held hostage by Islamic militants.
Police said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, a mostly lawless island about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) south of Manila that is one of the main strongholds of the Abu Sayyaf militant group.
“We found a head in a plastic bag,” provincial police chief Wilfredo Cayat told AFP.
He said the head belonged to a caucasian man, but emphasised it was impossible to immediately identify. The local police chief issued a report to journalists with similar details.
Canadian tourists John Ridsdel and Robert Hall, Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipina Marites Flor were kidnapped seven months ago from yachts at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometres (300 miles) from Jolo.
Six weeks after the abduction, Abu Sayyaf gunmen released a video on social media of their hostages held in a jungle setting demanding one billion pesos ($21 million) each for the safe release of the three foreigners.
The men were forced to beg on camera for their lives, and similar videos were posted over several months in which the hostages looked increasingly frail.
In the most recent video, Ridsdel, a retiree aged in his late 60s, said he would be killed on April 25 if a ransom of 300 million pesos was not paid.
The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird watcher kidnapped in 2012, and has been blamed for abducting 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month.
The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of Islamic militants listed by the United States as a terrorist organisation that operates from Jolo and nearby islands.
It is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the 1970s.
The Abu Sayyaf’s leaders have recently declared allegiance to the Islamic State jihadists that is causing carnage in the Middle East and has carried out deadly attacks in Europe.
However, analysts say the Filippino group is mainly focused on lucrative kidnappings for ransom, rather than waging an ideological war or creating a violent Islamic caliphate.
© 1994-2016 Agence France-Presse