Foreign hostages held by Philippine militants appeal for help

Three foreigners kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf militant group in the Philippines last year have appealed to their governments to help secure their release.

According to a video released Thursday, the captives said that they would be killed if the ransom demanded by the kidnappers was not paid.

The three foreign men along with a Filipino woman were shown in a video clip crouching on the ground with gunmen standing over them.

Sources have identified the hostages as two Canadians and a Norwegian national, who had been kidnapped from yachts in the southern Philippines last year.

On September 21, 2015, Gunmen raided a luxury marina near the major southern city of Davao, abducting the Norwegian owner of the resort, two Canadian tourists and one Filipino woman.

“To the Canadian prime minister and to the Canadian people in the world, please, do as needed to meet their demands, within one month or they will kill me, they will execute us,” Canadian tourist John Ridsdel said in the video, which was published on a militant website.

Robert Hall, another Canadian tourist, identified their captors as members of the Abu Sayyaf, which is notorious for kidnappings for ransom, beheadings and bombings.

Hall said he did not know how much money their captors were demanding but he appealed for help quickly. “The Canadian government has got to get us out of here fast.”

Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad also made a similar appeal. However, the Filipino woman did not speak in the footage.

The militant group, which is holding the hostages in the southern Philippine jungles, has set a one-month deadline for millions of dollars in ransom to be paid in exchange for release of the captives.

An earlier video from them demanded one billion pesos (USD 21 million) for each of the three foreigners.

In October 2014, the militant group claimed it received 250 million pesos (USD 5.3 million) in exchange for two German hostages they held captive for six months.

The militants are believed to be holding a retired Italian missionary whom they seized in the southern port city of Dipolog in October. They also killed a Malaysian hostage last year.

Abu Sayyaf members are in constant clashes with the Philippine forces across the troubled region. It has been blamed for several kidnappings in the past, including of foreign tourists.

Two major commanders of Abu Sayyaf expressed last year their support for the Daesh Takfiri terrorists based in Iraq and Syria.

Abu Sayyaf itself, which is listed as terrorist by both the United States and the Philippines, was once regarded as an offshoot of al-Qaeda.

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