By Stuart Grudgings and Dolly Aglay
Manila - The Philippine military was flying a captured leader of the Islamic Abu Sayyaf militants to Manila on Monday, giving President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo a badly needed boost in a pre-election drive to appear tough on crime.
Ghalib Andang, widely known as Commander Robot, burst into prominence in 2000 when he and his men captured a group of tourists and workers from the Sipadan dive resort in nearby Malaysia.
They held the hostages, who included French, German, Finnish and South African nationals, for months on the remote island of Jolo before freeing them in exchange for millions of dollars in ransom.
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'We have degraded the Abu Sayyaf group' Andang was wounded in a firefight with soldiers and captured on the island of Jolo on Sunday. A triumphant military planned to parade him for Arroyo at their base in the capital.
"Relentless pressure is taking its toll and we will keep it up until all the terrorists are accounted for and they no longer pose a threat," Arroyo said in a statement.
Andang is one of the top leaders of the Abu Sayyaf, a group which claims to be fighting for an Islamic state in the southern Philippines but are notorious mainly for kidnappings. Washington claims to have linked the group to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
Andang's capture came only two days after Arroyo lifted a moratorium on the death penalty, opening the way for the first executions in three years in response to a spate of kidnappings in Manila targeting the ethnic Chinese community.
Over the weekend, palace officials said that the moratorium would only be lifted for kidnappers and drug offenders, raising speculation that Arroyo was bowing to pressure from the wealthy and politically influential Chinese-Filipino community.
The abductions had fuelled criticism that Arroyo, who has styled herself on Britain's former "Iron Lady" prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was losing grip on law and order ahead of next May's elections.
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