Sayyaf frees kidnapped trader

COTABATO CITY - Abu Sayyaf rebels released Thursday night in Jolo, Sulu a kidnapped trader they snatched Jan. 6, three days after policemen raided one of their lairs in the province and uprooted P10-million worth of marijuana shrubs neatly planted in between coconut trees in the area.

Superintendent Candido Casimiro, Sulu's police director, said the victim, Edwin Endoso, was freed by his captors in a secluded district in Jolo, capital town of Sulu, after keeping him captive for three months in different lairs of the extremist group.

Endoso was abducted by members of the Abu Sayyaf in downtown Jolo in a daring attack pulled off amid the heavy presence of soldiers and policemen in the area.

"He is now safe and reunited with his family. He will be asked some questions by our investigators to augment the information we have about his captors," Casimiro told The STAR.

Casimiro said the release of Endoso came three days after they stumbled on a marijuana plantation owned by the Abu Sayyaf in Barangay Bilaan, Talipao while pursuing the kidnappers.

"This was shortly after our regional director (Sen. Supt. Jilhani Nani) ordered a renewed crackdown on the Abu Sayyaf as part of the effort to rescue Endoso," Casimiro said.

The intelligence community in the Armed Forces Southern Command said the kidnappers of Endoso belong to a syndicate led by a certain Garib Andang, a disgruntled member of the Moro National Liberation Front who joined the Abu Sayyaf in 1994.

In 1998, the MNLF's chairman, Gov. Nur Misuari of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, directed his followers in Sulu to help local authorities neutralize Andang, also known as "Commander Robot."

The first sensational kidnapping attack perpetrated by Andang and his men was the abduction in the early '90s of Oblate missionary Clarence Bertelsman while officiating Mass inside Camp Asturias, the police's provincial headquarters in Jolo.

His group had been tagged as responsible for the abduction of more than a dozen residents in Sulu in recent years, including the kidnapping in 1998 of two Malaysians and a Chinese working for a private fishing company in Tawi-Tawi.

The raiding policemen recovered 4,577 marijuana plants after swooping down on the rebels' hideout, guarded by some 20 guerillas who resisted at first but fled after sensing that Casimiro and his men had surrounded them.