Khadaffy Janjalani - Abu Sayyaf Group Under Abdurajik Janjalani

Abu Sayyaf Group Under Abdurajik Janjalani

His older brother Abdurajik then returned home to Basilan island in 1990, where he gathered radical members of the old MNLF, to found Abu Sayyaf Group. It was named after his own alias, which was Abu Sayyaf. MNLF had moderated into an established political party, which eventually became the ruling party of the ARMM, by its full institutionalization in 1996 on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao.

Meanwhile, Abu Sayyaf Group had started out on their own by 1991 under the leadership of the elder Janjalani brother, Abdurajik. By 1995 they had been acitve in large scale bombings and attacks in the Philippines, and also had become associated with Ramzi Yousef (of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1994 Philippine Airlines Flight 434 bombing, and the foiled 1995 Operation Bojinka), and also with Jemaah Islamiyah (al-Qaeda's southeast Asia associated branch led by Hambali). At some point in the early 1990s, the younger brother Khadaffy Janjalani had also joined Abu Sayyaf, as a teenager, and was eventually imprisoned by the Philippines government.

In 1995, 20 year-old Khadaffy Janjalani escaped from Camp Crame in Manila along with another member named Jovenal Bruno.

On December 18, 1998 the older brother Abdurajik Janjalani was killed in a firefight with the Philippine National Police on Basilan island. He is thought to have been about age 39 at the time of his death.