25 November 2015•Update: 27 November 2015
By Hader Glang
ZAMBOANGA, the Philippines
Police and armed forces continued searching Wednesday for the headless corpse of a Malaysian hostage executed by a Daesh-linked group in the predominantly Muslim province of Sulu in Philippines south.
Bernard Then Ted Fen was abducted Oct .14 with another hostage -- later released after a reported payment of a ransom -- from a restaurant in a seaside town in Malaysia.
Police Chief Junpikar Sitin told reporters "we are continuing the search for the place where the body of Then was buried."
He said a street sweeper had found a head inside a sack bearing the words "Bernard Then Ted Fen" dumped inside the city walls of Jolo, the capital of Sulu.
The 39-year-old electrical engineer appears to have been beheaded Nov. 17, one week after the group issued an ultimatum for 40 million pesos ($850,000).
Both police and military believe his body is buried in Tanan, a known stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf -- an armed separatist group which released a video of a senior leader pledging allegiance to Daesh last year.
Joint task force head Capt. Roy Vincent Trinidad said the military is also carrying out operations to locate the site where the body is buried.
At the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation summit in Malaysia last week, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak condemned the beheading, calling upon the authorities to take action against those responsible and to ensure the perpetrators were brought to justice.
Philippines President Benigno Aquino III then ordered his military to intensify its operations against the Abu Sayyaf.
Since 1991, the group -- armed with mostly improvised explosive devices, mortars and automatic rifles -- has carried out bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and extortions in a self-determined fight for an independent Islamic province in the Philippines.
It is notorious for beheading victims after ransoms have failed to be paid for their release.
