Kidnappers heed victim’s plea to be freed
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines—If the official police account is correct, all it took a 19-year-old college student to regain his freedom was to continuously plead with his abductors for mercy.
Chief Inspector Ariel Huesca, spokesperson of the Western Mindanao police office, said Basil Brice Bernardo, a radio technology student, was freed in the town of Ipil in Zamboanga Sibugay a few hours after he was abducted outside the Zamboanga City Medical Center here at noon Friday.
“He was allowed to disembark at the Ipil bus terminal and is now at the Ipil Municipal Police Station,” Huesca said.
Huesca said as soon as the victim was taken captive and shoved into their vehicle, Bernardo began to plead with his abductors to let him go.
“He was finally allowed to get off the vehicle in Ipil,” Guesca added.
Huesca said the police were still trying to identify the kidnapper and their motive for abducting Bernardo.
Meanwhile, the Zamboanga City police said it was certain that the Abu Sayyaf was behind two other kidnappings here—those of Zamboanga City teacher Cathy Mae Casipong last December 18, and, Sabrina Ikbala Voon on February 19.
Casipong was freed a week after she was abducted but Voon remains in captivity. Her abductors were asking P5 million for her freedom, according her uncle, retired Chief Superintendent Sukarno Ikbala.
“The group who took Voon is also related to the group that abducted Casipong,” said Senior Superintendent Angelito Casimiro, acting Zamboanga City police chief.
Chief Inspector Arthur Valdez of the Anti-Kidnapping Group said the gunmen who abducted Casipong and Voon were Abu Sayyaf members based in Basilan and Zamboanga Sibugay.
Casimiro said also that the police have established that Vice Mayor Arsina Nanoh of the town of Hadji Mutamad in Basilan had indeed been kidnapped.
He said ransom was demanded from the Nanoh family but he did not know if money had changed hands.
Nanoh was inside a mall here on March 4 when she texted her husband that she was being abducted. The vice mayor was released in Pagadian City the next day but was made to board a plane to Manila, where her husband met her.
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