Kidnapping of Angelo dela Cruz

At the time, there were 51 Filipino soldiers stationed in Iraq while about 4,000 civilians were working in the country, primarily under contract with military bases of the United States.

[4] Angelo dela Cruz was kidnapped near Fallujah while transporting fuel from Saudi Arabia on July 7, 2004[5] and later appeared in a broadcast by Al Jazeera pleading for his life.

[1] Following a five-hour cabinet meeting on July 12, then-Secretary Delia Albert of the Department of Foreign Affairs said that the Philippine government will not comply with the militants demands.

Dela Cruz reportedly requested the kidnappers a one-day extension so he could extend a message to the President of the Philippines and that his corpse be delivered to his country's government.

Then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard, while remarking that he does not want to be "harsh on a friend", describe the Philippines' move to withdraw its contingent earlier than planned as a "mistake" that would not "buy" the Southeast Asian country "immunity".

He acknowledge the crisis resulting from the kidnapping incident as a "wretched state of affairs" and said that giving in to the militant's demands won't stop similar occurrence from happening again.

[3] The militant group then issued a web message to the Japanese government to withdraw its 500-person contingent from Iraq as well threatening them with "lines of cars laden with explosives" and urged Japan to "Do what the Philippines has done".

[7] Pacific Strategies and Assessments, a firm based in the United States, said that the move of Arroyo's administration is to preempt possible backlash from the Overseas Filipino Workers community that identifies themselves with dela Cruz.

He returned to the Philippines after he was left bored due to being confined in an office workplace most of the time and found it unsustainable to remain unemployed in the United States.

He also ran as town councilor at an unspecified date under the Lakas-NUCD party with a platform focusing on the needs of Overseas Filipino Workers but lost.