Abu Sayyaf - Targeting The United States

Targeting The United States

Most of the Abu Sayyaf victims have been Filipinos. However, the group has also targeted foreigners for kidnapping because of the large ransom payments and North Americans for political reasons. Also they kidnap non-Filipinos for racial reasons as the Abu Sayyaff are also anti-Caucasian. Abu Sayyaf kidnapped an American Bible translator in the southern Philippines in 1993. 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 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Leaders of the Abu Sayyaf stated that "We have been trying hard to get an American because they may think we are afraid of them," a spokesman for Abu Sayyaf said. "We want to fight the American people."

They have also targeted Canadians, Australians, and European tourists.

Read more about this topic:  Abu Sayyaf

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:

    Steal away and stay away.
    Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any.
    Join the United States and join the family
    But not much in between unless a college.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.
    Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928)

    Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)