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:

    We can beat all Europe with United States soldiers. Give me a thousand Tennesseans, and I’ll whip any other thousand men on the globe!
    Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the United States generally, any more than to Patagonia.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)