Hostages plea for help: American couple hit by malaria

Sleepless and hungry and forced to march for eight hours each night through the mountains of Basilan, the remaining Abu Sayyaf hostages are near the end of their rope, and are pleading for help as their health "deteriorated fast."

This was how freed former hostage Francis Ganzon described the ordeal of his erstwhile fellow hostages under the clutches of Abu Sayyaf bandits who continue to drag 26 hostages around Basilan while evading pursuing government forces.

Ganzon, a 50-year-old lawyer, asked President Arroyo yesterday to suspend military pursuit operations on Basilan island to allow the delivery of medical supplies.

Ganzon, whom the bandits released to a Muslim cleric on Saturday along with Kimberly Jao Uy, said American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham of Kansas are already afflicted with malaria.

Martin, like several other hostages, is also nursing shrapnel wounds sustained during a clash between the bandits and the military, Ganzon said in an interview with Radio Mindanao Network.

Ganzon said he last saw the three Americans together after the intense fighting at a church-hospital compound in Lamitan town where nine other hostages were supposedly freed to arrange for ransom payments.

The Burnhams, residents of the country for 15 years, are among the 20 resort guests and workers who were seized by the bandits on May 27 from the upscale Dos Palmas island resort in Palawan.

The bandits also abducted four hospital workers in Lamitan to attend to their wounded. A separate Abu Sayyaf faction also seized 15 plantation workers in Lantawan town to carry their equipment.

Ganzon said he saw the Burnhams three days before he was released but he could not say what happened to the third American, Guillermo Sobero of California, whom the bandits claimed they beheaded on June 12.

"They tied Sobero’s hands behind his back using a thick nylon cord. I don’t know if the term is hog-tied," Ganzon said, adding the American was separated from the rest of the hostages who had been divided into three groups.

Ganzon said Sobero was "sick and in a withdrawal mode" when he last saw him. He quoted bandit leader Abu Sabaya as saying "Sobero is dead" but he did not actually see the American being killed.

"(They) are suffering a lot. They are deteriorating fast," Ganzon said, urging the government to send Red Cross workers to the rebel area.

Ganzon made the appeal shortly after he and Jao were released to Muslim cleric Mohaimin Sahi Latip amid suspicions that they paid ransom to the bandits for their release.

Ganzon said they were actually released on Wednesday but had to hike through the jungle for two days before reaching Tipo-Tipo town Saturday.

Despite the suspicions of ransom payment, however, Ganzon said he was freed by the Abu Sayyaf as a "gesture of goodwill" to convince the government to bring in Malaysian negotiators.

Sabaya told him to relay to the government that he was willing to free all hostages if the government allowed negotiations with fomrer Malaysian senator Sairin Karno and businessman Yusuf Hamdan.

The government, however, has wondered why the bandits are insisting on the involvement of the two Malaysians.

The Malaysian government has officially said it does not want to get involved and the Philippine government has dismissed the bandits’ demands as "academic" since they claimed to have beheaded Sobero.

Mrs. Arroyo has instead stood by a supposed no-ransom policy that appears to be losing credibility because of the suspicions that ransom is being paid by the hostages’ families.

Sources close to the families of some of the hostages told Reuters the bandits were considering releasing two more Filipinos but gave no other details.

The sources said the bandits have been using a satellite phone to contact their victims’ families and make ransom demands, the amounts depending on the social status of the families.

Another hostage released this week?

Camp Crame sources told The STAR another hostage from Palawan, Lalaine Chua, is also set to be released within the week after her parents pay ransom.

"Lalaine Chua is the next victim to be released. We have monitored negotiations by the Abu Sayyaf with the victim’s parents," the source said.

The source said the bandits initially demanded a P10-million ransom but the family could not raise the cash and mediators would likely convince the bandits to accept the cash raised so far and release the girl this week.

Both the police and the military were reluctant to divulge additional information about Chua because of the government’s so-called no-ransom policy.

But while sources claim the government is well aware of the ransom negotiations between the bandits and the captives’ families, Palace officials maintained Malacañang is not aware of the ransom payments.

"The government is not condoning any ransom payment even as we continue the military operations. We cannot put (the victims’) relatives on house arrest," said Presidential Spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao.

Meanwhile, Armed Forces chief Gen. Diomedio Villanueva said small units of soldiers, earlier reported to number 5,000, are now fanning out to various areas on Basilan to search and pursue the bandits.

"It’s not as dramatic as a final assault," Villanueva told reporters. "This is the kind of warfare we would have to do as terrain and demographics would allow us."

But National Security Adviser Roilo Golez said the military is still having difficulty in tracking the bandits and their hostages but assured that "their world is getting smaller."

"They have scouts who tell them when the military is near so they avoid contact," Golez told Reuters. "They’re always on the run but their world is getting smaller everyday."– With Paolo Romero