Bid to abduct journalists fails

Members of the Abu Sayyaf Group failed in an attempt to kidnap Canadian national Christopher Johnson and French national of Egyptian descent Urban Hamid last Friday, said Lieutenant Colonel Fredesvindo Covarrubias, commander of the southern command's civil relations group.

Two men in Army outfit, approached the two foreign media men when they were about to board a ferry from Zamboanga City to nearby Basilan Island last Friday.

The impostors said they were sent by some people to assist the media men, said Covarubias. The two journalists became suspicious and asked the men for identity cards. "The two journalists declined (the invitation)," said Covarubias,

When the journalists contacted the southern command, they were instructed not to proceed to Basilan but return to their hotel in Zamboanga City. The two are freelance journalists who arrived in Zamboanga last week.

"We did not send anybody to fetch foreign journalists," said Captain Harold Cabunoc, head of the Army Scout Ranger unit in Basilan.

"Intelligence reports indicated that the men who posed as Army men were Abu Sayyaf members trying to lure the journalists and perhaps kidnap them," Cabunoc explained.

The Abu Sayyaf Group abducted about a dozen foreign and local journalists who were covering the hostage taking of some 20 mostly foreign nationals from Sipdan, Malaysia in Jolo, Sulu, last April.

The hostage crisis ended in October, following military action against the group.

A warning issued by the military was not meant to prevent reporters from covering the event, said Presidential Spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao, adding it would not be "far fetched to imagine the Abu Sayyaf Group taking an interest in abducting foreign journalists.