Philippine group opposes US film on Abu Sayyaf

MANILA, Feb 18 (Reuters) A Philippine left-wing group said on Sunday it opposed a plan by a Hollywood filmmaker to produce a movie on al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants, describing the film as potential US propaganda material.

Disney and Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer bought the screen rights to ''Jihadists in Paradise'', an article written by Mark Bowden for the Atlantic Monthly, said Variety.Com on its Web site on February. 15.

Variety reported that Bowden, author of the best-selling book ''Blackhawk Down'', was chosen to write the screenplay of the movie about the rise of the Abu Sayyaf and one of its leaders, Aldam Tilao, alias Abu Sabaya, who was killed in 2002.

The film would revolve around the abduction of 20 foreign and local tourists from a resort on the Philippine island of Palawan, the ordeal of an American missionary couple who were kept for 18 months and their rescue and the death of Abu Sabaya.

An elite team of US-trained Marines tracked down and killed Sabaya in a sea battle in July 2002, nearly six months after 1,200 US soldiers descended on Basilan island, an Abu Sayyaf stronghold, to help train and advise the local military.

The two Americans were rescued from jungles in Zamboanga del Sur in July 2002. But one of them, Martin Burnham was killed by a stray bullet during the raid.

''It's propaganda and a psy-war movie aimed at justifying the United States' unwanted, immoral and anti-people intervention in the domestic affairs of the country,'' said Gerry Albert Corpuz, spokesman of the left-wing group Pamalakaya.

He said the film on Abu Sayyaf, the smallest yet most violent Muslim rebel group in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country, should also take into account the alleged collusion of the rebels with some generals and political warlords.

REUTERS PB PM1321