MANILA, Feb 25, 2010 (AFP) - Philippine police on Thursday announced they had arrested a member of the Al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group wanted for a string of high profile kidnappings and murders.
The arrest was the third reported success for Philippine authorities in a week against the Abu Sayyaf, a group of militants that operates in the south of the country and is blamed for the nation's worst terrorist attacks.
Mujibar Alih Amon, who had a 600,000 peso (13,000 dollar) bounty on his head, was arrested at his hideout in the mainly Muslim island of Jolo on Saturday, national police chief Director General Jesus Verzosa said.
"We are glad to present to you another major achievement," Verzosa said at a news conference at police headquarters in Manila as he handed out money to a hooded informant who had tipped authorities off about Amon.
"Amon is an active member of the urban terrorist group of the Abu Sayyaf and served as a logistics officer," Verzosa said.
The announcement came just four days after the military killed one of the Abu Sayyaf's top leaders, Albader Parad, and five of his men on southern Jolo island on Sunday.
Amon, 26, began his Abu Sayyaf career as a teenager when he joined the Abu Sayyaf in a cross border kidnapping raid on a Malaysian resort island in 2000, in which they grabbed 21 mostly European hostages, police said.
The hostages were ransomed off for millions of dollars and subsequently freed one after the other after months in captivity, officials said.
Amon then rose to become a logistics officer under Radulan Sahiron, a senior Abu Sayyaf leader on Jolo.
He has also been charged for a 2003 bombing that killed two Filipino soldiers and the kidnapping of six Christian missionaries in 2002, two of whom were beheaded.
Amon was also involved in the kidnapping of American Jeffrey Schilling in 2002 when the victim visited the home town of his Filipino Muslim wife on Jolo island, police said.
Schilling was later freed allegedly after an unspecified ransom payment.
Police had already announced that another Abu Sayyaf suspect who operated the boat used for the Malaysian hostage raid had been arrested last week in Manila while he was on a mission to buy bullets for the group.
Verzosa said Amon was also trained in bomb making by Umar Patek, a member of the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah blamed for the 2002 bombings in the resort island of Bali.
Patek, who has a one-million-dollar US-government bounty on his head, remains at large in the jungles of the southern Philippines under the protection of the Abu Sayyaf, officials say.
