| Philippine
Rebels May Kill Hostage By BOY TECSON, Associated
Press Writer
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines (AP) -
Muslim rebels in the Philippines threatened Tuesday to kill an American man they have
kidnapped unless the United States accepts their demands.
Jeffrey Craig Edwards
Schilling, of Oakland, Calif., was seized Monday by a faction of the Abu Sayyaf rebel
group, which this week released six other Western hostages in return for a reported $6
million ransom but was still holding 18 other captives.
But the faction holding
Schilling insisted the prospect of more ransom was not behind the latest kidnapping. In
past abductions, the faction has demanded the release of Muslim militants jailed in the
United States for the World Trade Center bombing and other planned attacks.
In a radio interview, rebel
spokesman Abu Sabaya said the rebels would ``not hesitate to execute this American guy if
the Philippine government and the U.S. will not listen to our demands.''
Sabaya said the specific
demands would be announced in three days. ``We demand for our principles, we demand for
our religion, we demand for our ideology,'' he told the Radio Mindanao Network.
``We have been trying very hard
to get an American because the Americans may think we are afraid of them,'' he said when
asked if they had abducted Schilling to prevent a military operation against Abu Sayyaf.
Chief government hostage
negotiator Robert Aventajado confirmed Schilling had been kidnapped, saying an envoy had
seen him in an Abu Sayyaf camp on southern Jolo island.
Schilling, 24, arrived in the
Philippines in March and has been living in a house with his Filipino girlfriend in
southern Zamboanga city, according to immigration records.
Sabaya said Schilling had
contacted Abu Sayyaf rebels in Zamboanga and identified himself as a Muslim convert who
was interested in visiting the camp of the rebels, who are fighting for an Islamic state
in the southern Philippines.
The rebels suspected he was a
CIA agent when they discovered he knew little about Islam and decided to abduct him to
Jolo, Sabaya said.
Schilling's girlfriend, Ivi V.
Osani, also a Muslim, gave a different account of the abduction.
She said the rebel spokesman
Sabaya is related to her mother and had been urging the couple for some time to visit the
rebels' camp on Jolo. Schilling, who was planning to return to the United States in early
September, finally agreed, and they went by boat on Sunday, she said.
Sobbing, Osani said Schilling
had told her to return alone to Zamboanga, and she had not discovered until her arrival on
Tuesday that he had been kidnapped.
Six U.S. Embassy officials flew
to Zamboanga Tuesday to investigate the abduction.
The Abu Sayyaf kidnapped 21
tourists and workers from Malaysia's Sipadan diving resort on April 23. Most of those
hostages - from France, Germany, Finland, South Africa, Malaysia and the Philippines -
have been released, but four remain. The rebels later seized three French journalists and
12 Filipino Christian evangelists who came to their hide-out.
This weekend, they released six
Western hostages after Libya reportedly paid $6 million in ransom, though Tripoli insisted
the money would go to development projects in the impoverished south, not directly to the
guerrillas.
Many Filipinos, drained from
the drawn-out hostage crisis, were worried that the large ransom payment would inspire new
kidnappings.
The Abu Sayyaf, the smaller of
two main Muslim rebel groups fighting in the south, is made up of several factions often
working independently.
In March, the faction that
snatched Schilling seized more than 50 Filipinos, including many children, from two
schools and held them on the island of Basilan. It executed two men from the group after
the United States refused its demands to release Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993
bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, and Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, accused of
conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks.
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