DAGUPAN CITY—Five of the leaders of the country’s biggest kidnap-for-ransom syndicates are in northern Luzon, and police have identified and are now hunting them, according to the head of a special police unit handling kidnapping cases.
The kidnapping leaders are now subjects of warrants of arrest, according to Chief Supt.
Isagani Nerez, head of the Philippine National Police’s Anti-Kidnapping Group (AKG).
Nerez said two of the syndicate leaders were remnants of a Nueva Ecija-based group identified by the Philippine Anti-Crime Emergency Response team in this city, while the three others were La Union-based and were preying on Indian nationals.
Nerez was here on Wednesday to establish an AKG satellite office for the Ilocos region.
“With good partnership between the Ilocos regional police and the antikidnapping group, we are optimistic that in the next days, we will be able to neutralize [kidnap-for-ransom suspects who are currently at large],” Nerez said.
He said kidnapping had become a public scourge once again, “but there are only three verified incidents in Luzon and five in Mindanao, or a total of eight kidnapping incidents since January.”
Reports about the kidnapping of an 8-year-old Burmese boy on June 22 in Biñan, Laguna, are being looked into, he said.
“If we go by definition of the Supreme Court [for kidnap-for-ransom cases], anything of value would cause the effective release of a person in captivity. The Burmese [child] was abandoned and the family did not pay a single cent,” said Nerez.
“But we are not closed to the possibility that the motive was to extort ransom. What we are saying is we have to finish investigation,” Nerez said .
The Burmese boy’s parents are employees earning P15,000 a month and do not even own a vehicle, “so [the boy] may not be considered as a target of kidnapping,” he said. Yolanda Sotelo, Inquirer Northern Luzon