Robert Hall's family mourns dead hostage, doesn't believe in ransoms

Relatives of a Canadian man killed by militants in the Philippines say they agree with Canada's stance on not paying ransom for hostages.

Robert Hall had been held hostage by Abu Sayyaf since September 2015 and was killed this week after a deadline for a ransom payment passed.

In a statement distributed by the press gallery in Ottawa, Hall's family says every option to free him was considered and efforts to that end were "vast and exhaustive."

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The family says it agrees with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's directive that money not be paid to hostage takers who seek to undermine fundamental Canadian values.

"Our family, even in our darkest hour, agrees wholeheartedly with Canada's policy of not paying ransom," the Hall family said in the statement. "We stand with the ideals that built this country; strength of character, resilience of spirit, and refusal to succumb to the demands of the wretched."

The family says it will remember Hall as a self-made man who worked his entire life to raise his family above the hardships of his own youth.

Hall was born in Calgary, but lived in various places in Western Canada.

Hall's death came after the killing in April of fellow Canadian John Ridsdel, who was snatched from a marina by Abu Sayyaf last September.

The whereabouts of two others taken around the same time, a Norwegian man and a woman from the Philippines, are unknown.