Canadian hostage John Ridsdel, a former mining executive, has been killed by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, a Canadian government official has confirmed.
The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said on Monday he was outraged by the killing, calling it an act of “cold-blooded murder.”
The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by Islamist militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives.
The army would not immediately confirm if the head was that of one of four people for whom the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf had demanded a ransom.
They are two Canadian men, including Ridsdel, along with one Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, who had appealed in a video for their families and governments to secure their release.
Residents found the head in the centre of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head.
The spokesman said Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300m-peso (£4.4m) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3pm local time.
The initial demand was 1bn pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at a luxury resort on Samal Island on 21 September.
Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country.
It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that country’s prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. The Philippine president, Benigno Aquino, ordered troops to intensify action against the militants.
Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict.
Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew.
(The Guardian)
