A senior member of the Philippine militant group Abu Sayyaf was sentenced Friday to 23 years in a US prison over the kidnapping for ransom of tourists including four Americans, officials said.
With former hostages from the 1995 drama watching in a Washington courtroom, a judge handed down the punishment to Madhatta Haipe, a Philippine citizen who was extradited to the United States last year.
Haipe, a former professor in Islamic studies, had faced life in prison but received a lighter sentence after pleading guilty. Prosecutors said Haipe was second-in-command of the Al-Qaeda-linked group at the time of the kidnapping.
"It was incredibly gratifying that so many of those victims were able to stand today in an American courtroom and watch the terrorist who held them hostage be sent to prison for his crimes," federal prosecutor Ronald Machen said.
Haipe admitted organizing the kidnapping of 16 people -- including six children -- in December 1995 near remote waterfalls on the southern island of Mindanao, with some of the adults tied up with rope.
The militants marched the hostages up a mountain after freeing four of them, who were told to retrieve ransom money and warned that those remaining would be killed if word got out about the kidnapping.
The kidnappers freed the others after receiving the ransom. The hostages included 11 Philippine citizens, four US citizens and one US permanent resident.
Abu Sayyaf, a US-designated terror organization, was founded in the 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network to fight for an independent Muslim state in the south of the mainly Catholic nation, Philippine officials say.
The militants often resort to kidnappings, mainly targeting foreigners and Christians, to raise funds from ransoms. Failure to pay ransoms often results in the beheading of the hostages.
The group is also capable of much bigger strikes, such as the bombing of a ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 that claimed more than 100 lives and was the nation's worst terrorist attack.
