Suspected Islamic militants wearing police uniforms kidnapped an elderly Swiss-born man from his home in the restive southern Philippines, authorities said yesterday.
Charles Reith, 72, who has been living in the Philippines for decades, was taken away from his beachside house by speedboat on Sunday night with the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf immediately named as the likely culprits.
“Our reports state that it is the Abu Sayyaf group although we are looking at other angles because the victim is a long-time resident,” national police chief Jesus Verzosa told reporters.
The Abu Sayyaf have for years terrorized foreigners and locals in Mindanao, kidnapping dozens of people in hopes of securing ransom payments.
Abu Sayyaf militants beheaded an American hostage in 2001 and chopped off the head of a local businessman on Basilan in December last year after their ransom demands went unfulfilled.
The US lists the Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organization and has hundreds of soldiers based in the southern Philippines to train the local military in how to fight the group.
However, there are many other groups in Mindanao that have staged kidnappings for ransom, including members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The local military and police said at least eight gunmen raided Reith’s home on the outskirts of Zamboanga, a major port city in the south, on Sunday night.
“The raiders, disguised as policemen, arrived on several speedboats and abducted Reith,” Colonel Santiago Baluyot, commander of the army’s anti-terrorist task force in Zamboanga, told reporters.
“We launched a pursuit operation, but it was too dark to track down the raiders,” he said.
Baluyot said Reith’s friend Karl Reichling, a German national, was with him when the abduction occurred.
The gunmen also attempted to take Reichling but he was able to fend them off, Baluyot said.
Baluyot and other army officers said Reith had been living in the southern Philippines for about 40 years and was a naturalized Filipino who has a local wife.
However, regional army chief Major General Romeo Lustestica said Reith was still a Swiss national. Officials at the Swiss embassy in Manila were not available yesterday for comment.
Reith was a well-respected member of the local community, said Congressman Erico Fabian of Zamboanga, a close friend of the abducted man.
“Mr Reith is a civic-minded person and a permanent fixture in business circles here,” Fabian told reporters. “I personally condemn this abduction because this guy is old and has done no wrong, only good, to the city.”
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS