Italian priest recovered

For several months he thought he was living like a monkey, subsisting on root crops, snake meat and monitor lizards. In between he dodged bullets, forced to regard his captors as his partners on the run.

Italian priest Giuseppe Pierantoni’s ordeal ended inexplicably yesterday, after his Pentagon Gang kidnappers abandoned him at the boundary of Zamboanga del Sur and the newly created Zamboanga Sibuguey province.

His six-month ordeal has not discouraged Pierantoni from planning a return to Mindanao after a short visit to his parents in Italy.

"I don’t think they will kidnap me again," he said shortly after he was recovered before dawn yesterday by a combined military-police task force.

Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Leandro Mendoza asserted that no ransom was paid for the release of the 45-year-old native of Bologna.

Mendoza said Pierantoni was found by elements of the elite Special Action Force (SAF) at about 3 a.m. in a forested area in Upper Tungawan.

Pierantoni was immediately flown to Manila and presented to President Arroyo at Malacañang yesterday morning. He was later turned over to the consul general of the Italian embassy in Manila and to officials of the Sacred Heart Congregation in Parañaque City where he would be resting for the next two days.

"Welcome back," the President told Pierantoni, who was accompanied to the Palace by Mendoza, Interior and Local Government Secretary Jose Lina, Italian Ambassador Umberto Colesanti and Director Edgar Galvante, PNP Task Force Mindanao chief.

Mendoza said the Italian was exhausted but nonetheless in "good physical health."

About 12 hours after he was recovered, a newly shaven Pierantoni said he was "already in paradise" while having an emotional reunion with his colleagues in Parañaque.

Pierantoni said that during his captivity, they sometimes had to "live like monkeys in the trees" and survived mainly on "indigenous food such as rice, rootcrops, snake meat and monitor lizards."

He also indicated that his abductors made him do work as a sentry at nighttime. "My enemy in the morning is my business partner at night looking out for hostile fire," he said.

He summed up his ordeal as a "very peculiar experience" that exposed him to the plight of impoverished minority Muslims in Mindanao. "We lived an extremely simple life," he added.

"It was an experience of dialogue, because they were Muslims with very simple ideas of their religion. It was interesting to listen to their experience of suffering and hopes of liberating Mindanao," he said.

Pierantoni said his kidnappers had assured him he would not be harmed and that they captured him to raise ransom money to buy arms to defend themselves from the military.

He said after seeing his parents who got depressed following his abduction, he planned to return to his parish in Dimataling town in Zamboanga del Sur where armed men snatched him on Oct. 17 last year while he was having dinner after celebrating Mass.

"I want to go back to the South, surely. I don’t think they will kidnap me again," he said.

He said his parents were also victims of his kidnapping. "Can you imagine what it means for them to believe that their son is dead for six months."

Mendoza told reporters that the rescued priest was tired, and immediately asked for his superiors.

He also said after Pierantoni has rested, he would be subjected to a debriefing to cull information about his abductors.

Photographs of Pentagon gang members in police custody will be shown to the priest in a bid to identify his kidnappers.

"He thought all the time that he was in Basilan. They (Pierantoni’s captors) kept identifying themselves as Abu Sayyaf members. We will have some validation with other sources," Mendoza added.

Pierantoni said about 60 armed men guarded him during his captivity.

Captors fled as lawmen were about to strike?

Citing a report on the recovery, Mendoza said the Pentagon gang fled and abandoned Pierantoni as the police-military task force led by Galvante and his deputy, Director Reynaldo Velasco, was closing in on their kidnappers’ hideout in Upper Tungawan.

"It was good that he was rescued. It was a good thing that there was no firefight," Mendoza noted.

Brig. Gen. Angel Atutubo, deputy commander of the Army’s First Infantry Division and Task Force Giuseppe chief, had a different story to tell.

Atutubo said the rescue came in the wake of intensified operations launched after three suspected Pentagon gang members arrested earlier revealed where the priest was being held by their comrades.

Atutubo said the kidnappers fled for their lives as the task force was about to swoop down on their hideout leaving Pierantoni behind.

In her weekly radio program, the President said however, that Pierantoni was rescued after a "fierce battle in the mountains of Mindanao."

She attributed Pierantoni’s release to intensified operations by elements of SAF and National Anti-Kidnapping Task Force backed up by the Eastern Mindanao regional police headed by Chief Superintendent Simeon Dizon.

The police had reportedly pinpointed the kidnappers’ lair as early as Friday.

However, Pierantoni hinted that his release appeared to have been pre-arranged. He said when his captors freed him after a 12-hour hike through dense forests, he was surprised to see that policemen and soldiers, along with an ambulance were already waiting for him.

He said he had an inkling about negotiations on his impending release three days before, but admitted he did not know the principal players.

Mrs. Arroyo, who observed her 55th birthday on Friday, described Pierantoni’s rescue as a "very beautiful birthday gift to me."

Obviously exhilarated by the development, she said it was a big step toward peace in Mindanao. "We are slowly reaping the fruits of our efforts to combat terrorism, poverty, crime, corruption and the respect for the rule of law," she said.

Armed men snatched Pierantoni on Oct. 17 after the victim celebrated Mass in his parish church in Dimataling town, Zamboanga del Sur.

Ransom talks mar recovery

The recovery of Pierantoni appeared to have been beclouded by talks about possible ransom payment even as authorities asserted that no money changed hands over the priest’s release.

"There was no ransom paid in this operation," Mendoza stressed.

"You know the policy of the government is no ransom, no negotiation. We never negotiated and never paid ransom for his release," he added.

However military officials who took part in the recovery mission noted that Bert Gonzales, presidential adviser on special concerns, and Mendoza were on hand in Upper Tungawan to meet Pierantoni as the priest emerged into the clearing.

"We don’t know what transpired during the negotiations as we in the military continued with our operations," a military official said.

"We were about to stage the rescue after we obtained the information (from the captured kidnappers), and we were surprised that the police were deploying too," he said said.

Meanwhile, Muslim religious leaders urged President Arroyo to order a deeper probe into the possible involvement of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the abduction of Pierantoni.

Ustadz Ameer Tanto, an Islamic scholar from Datu Ondin Sinsuat town, said they were convinced that the MILF had a hand in the kidnapping of the Italian priest.

"We are convinced that MILF forces in Zamboanga del Sur gave sanctuary to his captors and allowed them to hold the victim in their area," Maranao preacher Alim Jamil Paawidan said.

Paawidan also cited complicity of the MILF in recent kidnappings of religious leaders in Mindanao, including the murder of Irish priest Rufus Halley in Malabang town, Lanao in September last year.

"The killers of Fr. Rufus are now hiding in a rebel camp in Lanao del Sur. The MILF leaders there have ignored clamor by local leaders for them to help work for the surrender of the suspects," Paawidan said.

Halley was shot dead after he tried to fight off his attackers.

The MILF has steadfastly denied any complicity in kidnapping cases in Mindanao.

For his part, Ustadz Abdulkadil Manta of Kidapawan City said the MILF can prove its sincerity in talking peace with the government by restraining its forces from engaging in kidnapping activities. — With reports from Marichu Villanueva, Christina Mendez, Jaime Laude, wire services