The severed head of a Canadian hostage has been found on the streets of Samal Island in the Philippines.

Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, confirmed that a plastic bag containing a decapitated head and dumped in a street on Monday night by two men on a motorcycle in Jolo, a town in Sulu province of the Philippines, was that of John Ridsdel.

Ridsdel, 68, was kidnapped along with three other tourists – fellow Canadian Robert Hall, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman – last September by the Abu Sayyaf armed group from a marina on Samal Island, also known as Islam Garden.

Abu Sayyaf had earlier threatened to kill one of the three male hostages if a large ransom was not paid by 3pm on Monday local time.

Abu Sayyaf, which is considered a terrorist organisation by Canada and other Western countries, emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Moro Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation’s south.