Ma appeals: Give my son back to me

Rohanisa Abdul Jabar on Monday appealed to kidnappers who took her son, Ramram, in Manila seven years ago: “Give him back to me.”

Ramram, whose full name is Azramie Magondacan, was taken from the family home in Tondo, Manila, in 2010 when he was 3 years old.

Jabar has since been crying every day, praying and asking law enforcement agencies for help in recovering her son.

Ramram, or Ramkoy, would have turned, or maybe turned, 10 in May, Jabar said she could not be sure.

A certain Sittie Melva kidnapped Ramram with the help of his nanny Ula Arada on July 4, 2010. No one has learned whether he’s still alive.

Jabar sought the help of the Manila Police District, National Bureau of Investigation and Philippine National Police anticrime emergency response—to no avail.

She filed kidnapping charges against Arada and Melva but the case was dismissed.

Rowhanisa Abdul Jabar after the Inquirer interview at their house in Gagalangin, Tondo, Manila on Augusust 28, 2017, Monday. Her son, was kidnapped seven years ago, could be one of the child warriors fighting with Islamic State-inspired terrorists in Marawi City. INQUIRER PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA

Four months after the boy’s abduction, the law enforcement agencies downgraded the case from kidnapping to missing, “because up to now, no one has demanded any ransom from me,” Jabar said in an interview with the Inquirer on Monday.

To keep her hopes alive, Jabar maintained a Facebook page, “This Kid is Missing,” asking the public for help in disseminating Ramram’s pictures.

Child soldier

She offered a P100,000 reward for information that would lead to the recovery of her child. After seven years there was nothing, except for insensitive pranks asking her for money.

A message from Facebook user Omi Koto on Aug. 25 reignited Jabar’s hope. The unknown social media user sent her photos of a child soldier who allegedly fights for the Maute terror group in Marawi City, where Jabar was born.

The similarities between the boy in the picture who carried an assault rifle and Ramram were so striking that Jabar said she trembled.

“What if it’s he?” she said.

In their last conversation, Omi Koto told Jabar he got the picture from a Bangsamoro Facebook page where pictures retrieved from the gadgets of Maute fighters were posted.

Jabar said she had no way to verify if the boy in the picture was Ramram and Omi Koto could no longer be contacted.

As she came to another dead end, Jabar appealed to Ramram’s kidnappers again.

“If that boy is really my son, I have been waiting so long to get him back. If he is in the war zone, please return him to me. He is not your son,” she said.

Jabar put the child soldier’s photo beside Ramram’s photo seven years ago and posted them on her Facebook page.

She asked netizens to help her locate her son, or help her verify if the child soldier was the son she lost seven years ago.

Birthmark

The only way to verify is to see if the child soldier has the same birthmark as Ramram’s, she said.

“He has a brown birthmark in his right jaw. That’s the only body mark that could tell us that he’s my son,” Jabar said.

The military is verifying the authenticity of the pictures, Capt. Jo-Ann Petinglay, spokesperson for the military’s Western Mindanao Command, told the Inquirer on Sunday.

Petinglay said civilians rescued from the battle zone in Marawi City had spoken of child soldiers fighting side by side with Maute and Abu Sayyaf terrorists.

Col. Romeo Brawner, deputy commander of Task Group Ranao, confirmed that the terrorists were using child soldiers.

“There’s no word yet from our intelligence operatives,” Petinglay said, referring to the verification of Ramram’s picture.

No moving on

Jabar said relatives and friends were convincing her to move on. Her mother threw away Ramram’s only toy — a Mickey Mouse doll — to force her to forget, she said.

“Move on? But a mother could never forget her child,” she said.