MANILA - A Manila court sentenced 14 members of a Muslim militant group to life in prison on Thursday for the kidnapping of 20 people from a luxury beach resort in 2001 and the decapitation of three of them, including an American.
Guillermo Sobero was beheaded a few weeks after he was snatched at gunpoint from the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan in the western Philippines by members of the Abu Sayyaf group.
Another American, missionary Martin Burnham, and a Filipino nurse were killed in an army rescue operation after the hostages had spent a year in captivity in the jungles of the southern Philippines.
Burnham's wife Gracia was shot in the leg but survived and wrote two books about the ordeal.
The judge at the trial court handed down 20 life sentences to each of the guilty men and ordered them to pay damages of between 50,000-300,000 pesos (590-3,500 pounds) to each of the victims.
"There's no justice in this country," Toting Hannoh, one of those convicted, told Reuters as he was being led by security officers to a police van outside the court after the sentencing.
"The Abu Sayyaf will grow stronger. We will be back."
Four other people, including one woman, were acquitted of the charges, a court official said.
The Abu Sayyaf is the smallest but deadliest Muslim rebel group in the south of the mainly Catholic country, with a reputation for savagery.
Members of the gang raided Dos Palmas, an upscale seaside resort in the western Philippines, and took away the hostages by speedboat to the southern islands of Basilan and Jolo.
The Burnhams were there to celebrate their 18th wedding anniversary, while Sobero, the other American, was on a holiday with his Filipina girlfriend.
