ZAMBOANGA CITY—I would have become the fifth person in the group abducted in Sulu had not my son John Kenneth and Inquirer Mindanao bureau chief Nico Alconaba objected to my joining the coverage.

I admit that when Alconaba said no, I was still open to the idea of going to Sulu because my security had been assured and I would be traveling with Ces Drilon and her crew.

I was confident that when I filed my report to the bureau once I got home, Alconaba would not be angry that I went against his order.

But when finally the schedule was arranged, I had to beg off because my son’s nanny had left for a summer vacation and was not due back soon.

I also asked my son if I could go away for a day or two in Sulu.

He said: “Again? There might be a bomb there. It’s OK if you take me with you. If not, definitely not.”

I always leave my son at home whenever I cover Sulu.

When a friend contacted me early on Monday to tell me that Drilon and three others were missing, I became quite worried, especially when the name of Prof. Octavio Dinampo was mentioned.

It was Dinampo, chair of Sulu’s Bantay Ceasefire and executive officer of Tulung Lupah Sug, who invited the Philippine Daily Inquirer in May to an exclusive coverage of the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu.

Dinampo’s credibility and his reputation as an educator at Mindanao State University in Sulu have made him one of Inquirer Mindanao’s regular sources of information.

He has access to the Moro National Liberation Front and also has a databank of information on the Abu Sayyaf.

The first time Dinampo offered to facilitate coverage was during a fact-finding mission conducted in Maimbung, Sulu, on Feb. 20.

I had to turn down the offer because of time and financial constraints.

The second invitation to a coverage of the Abu Sayyaf was made during the March 18 commemoration of the Jabidah massacre, when Dinampo and members of non-government and civil society organizations marched from Cagayan de Oro City to attend the rites in Corregidor Island.

(The Jabidah massacre happened on March 19, 1968, wherein men, who hailed from Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, were killed by their military training officers on Corregidor after they refused to carry out a secret plan of the Marcos administration to invade Sabah in Malaysia. The massacre inspired Nur Misuari, then a Political Science professor at the University of the Philippines, to establish the Moro National Liberation Front.)

Dinampo then said the coverage in Sulu would be conducted together with Drilon. But the Inquirer decided to pass on that one because ABS-CBN wanted an exclusive report.

Token gift

Dinampo’s third invitation to the Inquirer, made in mid-May, came in the form of a text message.

He said an interview had been arranged with an Abu Sayyaf personality, but that the “sources” might demand some “token”—say a mobile phone—as a confidence-building measure.

I forwarded the message to Alconaba, who promptly objected, citing the Inquirer policy on dealings with sources.

Something amiss

Alconaba also sensed something amiss in the security arrangements when the “sources” later dropped their demand for a “token” just to accommodate the Inquirer.

Dinampo was the first person to report that a corpse unearthed in Tawi-Tawi was not the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist Dulmatin. He also led the fact-finding mission in Maimbung that looked into the killing of eight people, including a pregnant woman and two children, allegedly by soldiers.

He also earlier questioned the purported rice shortage, pointing out that Sulu was one of the provinces in the region that enjoyed cheaper but high-quality rice.