66 convicted in 2000 kidnappings

MANILA, Philippines — A Philippine court on Friday found 66 alleged members of Abu Sayyaf guilty of kidnapping dozens of students, teachers and a Catholic priest in the south in 2000, in the largest single conviction involving the brutal Muslim militant group.

The Regional Trial Court branch 261 acquitted for lack of evidence 20 other people who have been in jail for a number of years while insisting they were innocent in the March 2000 kidnappings of 52 people, mostly young students at two schools on Basilan Island.

Two kidnapped teachers were beheaded and a priest died while in Abu Sayyaf custody. The other hostages were rescued or freed after local officials negotiated for their release a few days after they were kidnapped en masse from the schools in the villages of Tumahubong and Sinangkapan.

The Abu Sayyaf — or Bearer of the Sword — has been listed as a terrorist group by the United States. It was founded around the early 1990s in the poverty-stricken, predominantly Muslim Basilan province.

Nearly 100 people were charged in the Basilan kidnappings. An Associated Press investigation in 2014 that included interviews with prosecutors and key witnesses showed dozens of people were detained despite a lack of evidence against them.

An Abu Sayyaf commander — Abu Gandhie, who took part in the planning but was captured and later turned state witness — said at the time that more than 40 militants took part in the mass kidnappings, including more than 10 who were later killed in clashes with troops. When he testified in court, he identified only 12 of the dozens of men who were charged as among those who actually took part in the abductions.