ZAMBOANGA CITY—Abu Sayyaf bandits have executed the school principal they kidnapped last month in Sulu.

Maj. Ramon David Hontiveros, Western Mindanao Command (Wesmincom) spokesman, said the decapitated head of Gabriel Canizares was found at about 5 a.m. on Monday near the Caltex gas station in the capital town of Jolo.

Hontiveros said Canizares’s head was wrapped in a sack that was tossed by two men riding in tandem on a motorcycle in front of the gasoline station.

The victim’s relatives confirmed that the head was Canizares’s.

“The bandits have again proven their barbaric nature today [Monday],” Hontiveros said in announcing Canizares’s beheading.

Abu Sayyaf bandits seized Canizares at about 4:30 p.m. on October 19 in barangay Tanum, Patikul, while he was on the way home from his workplace to barangay San Raymundo, Jolo.

Canizares, the principal of Kanague Elementary School in Patikul, was aboard a passenger jeep together with other teachers when the bandits waylaid the vehicle and seized him.

The kidnappers demanded P2 million for his release.

Hontiveros said the joint military and police forces that are working with the Crisis Management Committee (CMC) for Canizares’s rescue will now shift to punitive action.

The Teachers Organization of the Philippine Public Sector (TOPPS) has condemned the killing of Canizares.

Also still in the hands of a still-unidentified kidnap-for-ransom group was Donald John Capili, a grandson of a prominent businessman in Liloy town in Zamboanga del Norte.

Abelardo Brutas Jr. of TOPPS said the teachers were also dismayed by the government’s lack of concern in the case of their beheaded colleague as compared with its efforts in other kidnapping incidents involving foreign individuals, such as former kidnap victims Swiss Andreas Notter and Italian Eugenio Vagni, both workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Notter ang Vagni and their coworker, Filipina Mary Jean Lacaba, were seized by the Abu Sayyaf on January 15 just outside the gates of the Sulu provincial capitol in Patikul town. All three were released separately after a few months of captivity and amid rumors of payoffs.

Meanwhile, policemen arrested a leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) who was implicated in the 2007 ambush and beheading of Marines in Basilan.

Supt. Jose Bayani Gucela, Western Mindanao police spokesman, identified the arrested suspect as Hassan Asnawi, alias Dan Laksaw, and Abu Manzin.

Gucela said Asnawi, the deputy commander of the MILF’s 114th Base Command, was arrested on the strength of a warrant of arrest issued by the Regional Trial Court in Basilan at about 4:30 p.m. on Saturday at the Zamboanga International Airport while he was about to board a flight for Manila.

Gucela said Asnawi is among the 130 MILF rebels charged in court for the July 10, 2007, ambush and beheading of 14 Marines in Basilan. (With Z. Solmerin)