MANILA, June 24 (Xinhua) -- A senior member of the Al Qaeda-linked local militant group -- the Abu Sayyaf -- has been arrested in the southern Philippines for suspected participation in the country's most notorious kidnappings in the past decade, an Army spokesman said Wednesday.

    Mubin Sakandal, known as Abdurajak, was arrested on May 22 by Marines and Army operatives in Patikul town in Sulu province while the suspect was about to board a pump boat, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Arnulfo Marcelo Burgos announced in Manila.

    Abdurajak is believed to be a mastermind in the abduction of 21 foreign tourists in Malaysia's Sipadan resort in 2000 and the abduction of three Americans and 17 Filipinos in Philippines' poshDos Palmas resort in 2001.

    Washington has earmarked 10,000 U.S. dollars as bounties for his arrest and the Philippine government offered 2 million pesos (41,322 U.S. dollars).

    Burgos said Sakandal is a "pioneer member" of the Abu Sayyaf and was a trusted lieutenant of the former leader Khadaffy Janjalani, who and other Islamic extremists founded the group in the southern Philippines in the early 1990s. Khadaffy was killed in a clash with government troops in 2006.

    The Abu Sayyaf thrived during Khadaffy's time by staging a series of terrorist attacks and high profile kidnappings but its clout and influence shrank in the past three years. Currently, the group has merely over 300 members, hidden in the jungles of Basilan and Sulu islands in the south.

    Burgos on Wednesday said the military also arrested a member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), who facilitated money transfer between the MILF, the country's largest rebel group and the Indonesia-based regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JL).

    He said the arrest of Ansar Bernardino Venancio would cut the financial survival line of around 40 JI members harbored by Filipino militants in the country.

    "This is a big blow on the part of the Abu Sayyaf and the JI based in the Philippines," Burgos said, adding that both "hard-line terrorists" are under police interrogation.