The officials who dealt with the abduction said they suspected rogue members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a former Muslim secessionist group that signed a preliminary peace accord with the government last year, the Abu Sayyaf group and the Al Khobar criminal gang collaborated in detaining Rodwell and negotiating for a ransom.

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The seventh member of the gang, Ezzat Hamasleh, of Beaks Farm Gardens in Edgbaston, Birmingham, laundered the group's criminal proceeds.

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