Philippines says arrests militant in the south

MANILA, Nov 25 (Reuters) A fugitive Muslim militant, among members of Abu Sayyaf rebels who had beheaded a captive American tourist in the southern Philippines in 2001, was arrested in the south, army officials said today.

Major Eugene Batara, an army spokesman, said Annik Abbas was on a motorcycle when soldiers stopped him at a checkpoint near Tuburan town on the southern island of Basilan late yesterday.

''He did not resist arrest,'' Batara said, adding the Muslim militant was under surveillance for weeks after residents in a coastal village informed army intelligence of his hideout.

''Abbas was among Abu Sayyaf who kidnapped 20 American and Filipino tourists from a resort island on Palawan in 2001. We have information he took part in the beheading of American tourist Guillermo Sobero on Basilan.'' Abbas was arrested in 2002 in an army offensive on Basilan but escaped from the provincial jail two years later.

In August 20004, four months after he had escaped from jail, a local court found him and 16 others guilty for taking part in the kidnapping of 50 students in 2000 and was sentenced to die by lethal injection.

But he was saved from the gallows when President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed a law scrapping the death penalty in the Philippines, commuting sentences of over 1,000 death row convicts to life imprisonment.

Batara said Abbas was the second militant who had taken part in the beheading of Sobero. Abdusalih Dimah was caught in his mountain hideout on Basilan in April.

The Abu Sayyaf, the smallest but most violent of four Muslim rebel groups in the Philippines, is suspected of links to al Qaeda and regional network Jemaah Islamiah.

It was blamed for the country's worst terror attack, the bombing of a ferry near Manila in February 2004 that killed more than 100 people.

REUTERS BDP RK1410