10 workers seized by Abus gain freedom

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Were the 10 construction workers abducted by Abu Sayyaf bandits in Basilan province released or rescued? Police and military officials on Tuesday gave different accounts.

Supt. Oscar Nantes, Basilan police director, said the workers were set free by their captors in Barangay Pamatsaken in Sumisip town around 6:58 p.m. on Monday. But Col. Rolando Bautista, commander of the Joint Task Group Basilan, said they were rescued by members of the Marine Battalion Landing Team 11 and the Army’s 64th Infantry Battalion during an operation.

The workers were identified as Nasser Jallaha, Merhussin Ubbay, Mustapha Gapul, Abukaisir Nasilin, Jaya Abdulla, Johann Sarao, Nadzhar Gabon, Alsibar Jauhar, Margani Alpha and Munib Sadidul.

They were hired by Mike Abubakar Construction and Engineering, a company completing government projects in Sumisip, said Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Abu Sayyaf bandits led by Juhaibel Alamsirul stopped the men who were aboard a water delivery truck while passing through in the village of Crossing Binembengan around 8:45 a.m. on Monday. They later burned the truck, Nantes said.

According to a report of The Associated Press, 15 to 20 heavily armed men stopped the truck carrying 11 workers to a road construction site. Two workers escaped by jumping off the truck and then alerted a militia outpost, it said, quoting Bautista.

More than 500 soldiers and marines, including those from a quick-reaction force predeployed in rural detachments to interdict kidnappers, launched a search and closed in on the fleeing gunmen later on Monday after discovering the abandoned truck, which was burned by the bandits, AP said.

Bautista said the military pursued the bandits for six hours. “[They] were pressured and force to leave the kidnap victims to avoid being trapped,” he said.

Bautista told AP on the telephone that the workers were all Muslims, and that the attempted abduction would just “further isolate” the Abu Sayyaf from local residents.

The abduction is the first reported in Basilan since the kidnapping of Dina Lim and her daughter, Yahong, on May 22, 2014.

Sporadic Abu Sayyaf attacks have delayed the completion of a foreign-funded 132-kilometer (82-mile) road that will connect towns in predominantly Muslim Basilan, one of the country’s poorest provinces.

The Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 gunmen split into a few factions in Basilan and outlying islands, originally projected itself as an armed group fighting for a separate Muslim homeland in the south, home of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic country, but military officials dismiss the gunmen as bandits involved mainly in kidnappings, extortion and deadly bombings.

The United States has blacklisted the Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organization, and a Philippine court last week designated it a terrorist organization, the first to be so outlawed using the country’s rarely used antiterrorism law.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said that would help the government prosecute not only its members but also its supporters and financiers. Reports from Julie S. Alipala, Inquirer Mindanao, and AP