17 August 2016•Update: 17 August 2016
By Hader Glang
ZAMBOANGA CITY, the Philippines
Suspected Daesh-linked militants in the Philippines south have released a video threatening to behead a Filipino hostage unless a ransom demand is paid by Aug. 24.
In a two-minute video clip released Wednesday, the hostage -- in his early 20s -- appeals to local officials in the majority Muslim island province of Sulu to pay ransom of 1 million pesos ($21,530) to the Abu Sayyaf and rescue him.
“I am Patrick James Almodovar,” he says in the local Tausug dialect in the video, also reported by a local television station.
“To Governor Totoh Tan and Mayor Kerkar Tan and to my relatives, I am appealing for your help to free me from my captors and they are asking one million pesos and if they don’t get what they are demanding, they will behead me exactly at 2 in the afternoon.”
According to the Mindanao Examiner, Almodovar’s kidnapping had not been reported and security forces did not immediately respond to the video.
On Tuesday, the military confirmed that an elementary school teacher was abducted by suspected Abu Sayyaf members in Liang village in Sulu’s Patikul town.
Last month, Abu Sayyaf militants seized Levi Gonzales, his pregnant wife and their companion in another village in Patikul.
The group has reportedly threatened to behead Gonzales, a technician, if the telecommunications company he works for does not pay a 1 million peso ransom.
Earlier this year, the group beheaded two Canadian hostages after ransoms failed to be paid. It has threatened to decapitate a Norwegian captured with them in September if a 300 million peso ($6 million) ransom demand is not met.
Since 1991, the Abu Sayyaf -- armed with mostly improvised explosive devices, mortars and automatic rifles -- has carried out bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and extortions in a self-determined fight for an independent province in the Philippines.
It is notorious for beheading victims after ransoms have failed to be paid for their release.
The Abu Sayyaf is among two militant groups in the south who have pledged allegiance to Daesh, prompting fears during the stalling of a peace process between the government and the country's biggest Moro group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, that Daesh could make inroads in a region torn by decades of armed conflict.
