3 seamen aboard Malaysian fishing boat abducted

KUALA LUMPUR • Three crew members on a Malaysian fishing trawler have been kidnapped in waters where militants from the Abu Sayyaf group have previously taken hostages, a security official said yesterday.

The incident is believed to have occurred late on Saturday off Pom Pom Island, a popular scuba diving location in the eastern state of Sabah. "The boat is Malaysian registered," Datuk Wan Abdul Bari Abdul Khalid, head of Malaysia's Eastern Sabah Security Command, said, without providing details.

The authorities did not directly link the kidnapping to the Abu Sayyaf group, but Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said a "kidnap-for-ransom" group was responsible.

"The kidnap-for-ransom group operates near the southern Philippines, near Malaysian islands, and although the authorities monitor the waters closely, this group moves under the radar," he was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times.

Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid added that the three people kidnapped were not Malaysian citizens, but permanent residents.

In May, the Abu Sayyaf released 14 Indonesian sailors who had been kidnapped in two high-seas raids, attacks that prompted Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to launch joint patrols.

In July, Malaysian police said five Malaysian tugboat crew were abducted by Abu Sayyaf off the coast of Sabah.

Abu Sayyaf is a loose network of a few hundred Islamist militants, formed in the 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, that has earned millions of dollars from kidnappings-for-ransom.

In April and June the group beheaded two Canadian tourists after ransom demands were not met. A Malaysian man was beheaded last year.

Malaysian security forces in Sabah have been on high alert and on the lookout for militants fleeing the southern Philippines after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the military last month to ramp up its offensive against the extremist group.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 12, 2016, with the headline 3 seamen aboard Malaysian fishing boat abducted. Subscribe