7 Abu Sayyaf men get death for massacre

ISABELA, Basilan — Seven members of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf were sentenced to death here yesterday for the 2001 kidnapping and beheading of a group of farm workers in Lamitan town.

Six of the defendants stood impassively, while their relatives wept and embraced each other as the verdict was read out inside a small and heavily guarded building in this capital town.

Abu Sayyaf members Ibrahim Bowak, Muddas Sabinul, Abdulla Uwa, Daud Indaling, Etang Awal, Jimmy Teng and Janital Wahid were sentenced by Regional Trial Court Judge Leo Prinsipe.

Etang Awal remains at large and was sentenced in absentia. He escaped from the Basilan provincial jail early this year.

Under the law, those convicted would be executed by lethal injection.

The case stemmed from an Abu Sayyaf raid on a farm in Balobo, Lamitan town on Aug. 2, 2001.

The gunmen, disguised as soldiers, abducted a group of 36 farm workers and later beheaded nine of them. Another hostage was shot dead. The extremists also torched a schoolhouse.

In April last year, the Basilan court also sentenced 17 other Abu Sayyaf members to death.

The US government placed the Abu Sayyaf in its "foreign terrorist organization" blacklist after a kidnapping raid in Palawan in 2001.

Two American hostages, Guillermo Sobero and Martin Burnham, were killed in captivity.

Security officials praised the verdict. "Justice is now served and let this be a warning to all that crime does not pay," said Maj. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, commander of the Army’s Special Operation Command.

Esperon was the provincial military commander in Basilan during the kidnappings. — Roel Pareño, AFP