“Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, the sharks called Abu Sayyaf rear their ugly heads again,” said the Manila Standard newspaper. Military spokesman Colonel Jose Mendoza denied that the kidnapping shows the Abu Sayyaf still has much power. Police and military officers say the kidnappings were led by Muin Maulod Sahiron, a nephew of Radullan Sahiron who heads the Abu Sayyaf group in Patikul. Police said two men with pistols stopped a jeep carrying the Jehovah’s Witnesses and forced them out Tuesday The driver was left behind and alerted authorities. Two other people in the vehicle, who were Muslim, were not taken Police also found Avon products and herbal teas in the jeep.

A spokesman at the Avon Product, Inc.’s New York headquarters, Victor Beaudet, said the abductees were not employees or official Avon representatives. The Abu Sayyaf has often kidnapped for ransom but more frequently has abducted poor Filipinos, mostly Christians, to serve for weeks or months as slave labour Kidnapped women are sometimes forced to marry guerrillas. For six months from February, about 1,200 US troops trained and gave supplies and intelligence to Philippine troops hunting the Abu Sayyaf. Last year, Abu Sayyaf rebels raided a tourist resort and abducted three Americans and 17 Filipinos.

The gang beheaded American Guillermo Sobero and several Filipino hostages. That kidnapping saga ended on 7 June this year when U.S.-trained and backed Philippine soldiers tracked down the rebels. They rescued American missionary Gracia Burnham, but her husband Martin Burnham and Filipino nurse Ediborah Yap were killed in the bloody jungle raid. A Filipino man, Roland Ullah, is still being held from another Abu Sayyaf mass kidnapping at a tourist resort in Malaysia two years ago.. The former chief of the Rwandan armed forces pleaded not guilty yesterday to genocide charges for his role in the 1994 massacres that left almost one million people dead.

The orchestrated killings were triggered by the mysterious death in a plane crash of the Hutu president Juv?l Habyarimana.The charges against General Bizimungu, 50, include genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. After listening impassively to the long indictment, the general said: “I plead not guilty.”He is accused of setting up and arming the Hutu militia, known as the Interahamwe, which undertook much of the slaughter. He fled into exile after being defeated by the Tutsi forces who have ruled Rwanda ever since. Many of the Interahamwe crossed into the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, from where they continued to stage incursions.While in Congo, General Bizimungu formed the rebel Army for the Liberation of Rwanda, made up of Interahamwe and former Rwandan soldiers, who tried to seize power in Rwanda in 1997-98 and again last year.General Bizimungu is accused by the UN court of distributing weapons to militiamen, and publicly stating in February 1994 that if Tutsi- led rebels attacked Rwanda again, he would not want to see any Tutsi alive in his sector of operations. He has been quoted as describing the Tutsis as “cockroaches”.His arrest last week when he was found among demobilised Unita rebels in Angola was a coup for the tribunal, which has been dogged by scandal and accusations of foot-dragging.