December 12, 2016•Update: December 12, 2016
By Hader Glang
ZAMBOANGA CITY, the Philippines
Two Indonesians have been freed by a Daesh-linked group after five months in captivity.
Maj. Filemon Tan Jr., a spokesman for Western Mindanao Command, said in a statement Monday that Mohammad Nazir, 62, and Robin Piter, 32, had been released earlier Monday following their kidnapping in waters near Simisa Island in southern Sulu on June 22.
He added that the duo were released through negotiations with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a Moro group instrumental in negotiations with kidnappers in the Sulu region.
"The two Indonesian hostages were released by their Abu Sayyaf captors... and handed to MNLF commander Tahir Sali," he added.
The military said that the duo is the last of seven crew abducted from a tugboat last June to be released.
In September, the MNLF also helped facilitate the release of Norwegian captive Kjartan Sekkingstad and other Indonesian hostages.
The Abu Sayyaf is believed to be holding around 15 foreigners -- including five Malaysians -- and several Filipinos on the island of Sulu.
The military has also blamed the group for the recent abduction of six sailors from a Vietnamese-flagged vessel off nearby Basilan island as well as a German man -- whose partner was shot dead -- from a yacht off Sulu.
Police and military reports released in the Philippines in October stated that the Abu Sayyaf had shifted its priorities from abducting foreigners and businesspeople on the mainland to foreign-flagged tugboats and their crews -- many of them Malaysian and Indonesian nationals -- in local shipping lanes.
The reports also revealed that the group made around 353 million pesos ($7.3 million) from kidnap-for-ransom activities in the first six months of this year.
Since 1991, the group -- 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 one of 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 one-time largest Moro rebel group that it could make inroads in a region torn by decades of armed conflict.
