Targeting The United States
Most of the Abu Sayyaf victims have been Filipinos. However, non-Filipinos have also been taken hostage for large ransom payment demands. Westerners, especially Americans, have been targeted for political reasons.
In 1993, Abu Sayyaf kidnapped an American Bible translator in the southern Philippines. In 2000, Abu Sayyaf captured an American Muslim visiting Jolo and demanded that the United States release Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, who were jailed for their involvement in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993.
A spokesman for the Abu Sayyaf has stated that, "We have been trying hard to get an American because they may think we are afraid of them." He added, "We want to fight the American people."
British, Canadian, Australian, French, and German tourists have been kidnapped as well.
Read more about this topic: 2009 Sulu Kidnapping Crisis
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“Europe and the U.K. are yesterday’s world. Tomorrow is in the United States.”
—R.W. “Tiny” Rowland (b. 1917)
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)