Mass for Tarongoy’s release held

A Mass was offered yesterday for the safe release of Roberto Tarongoy, whose captivity in Iraq since November last year nearly ended over the weekend with blood being spilled if not for persistent appeals for further talks.

Iraqi militants holding the Filipino accountant agreed to continue negotiations for his release as the deadline for his execution expired Friday.

Four months into the hostage crisis Tarongoy’s fate still hangs in the balance, said activist priest Fr. Robert Reyes, who officiated the morning Mass held at the historic Chino Roces (formerly Mendiola) Bridge near Malacañang.

"There is still no assurance. This is the reason why the government has not stopped in negotiating for Robert’s release. We should all strive to secure the safe release of another Filipino," Reyes said.

Tarongoy was spared from execution indefinitely as a government team led by Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis is in Iraq to work on his freedom.

"We will continue to exert utmost effort to bring him home alive. We must keep our faith that he will survive his ordeal," said a statement from President Arroyo’s office.

In Baghdad, Philippine Ambassador Ricardo Endaya refused to provide further details or say whether his government was negotiating a ransom with Tarongoy’s captors, a practice both the Iraqi government and US military are strongly opposed to.

While Tarongoy’s loved ones and the rest of the nation could breathe again for now with the latest reprieve, Reyes said the Iraqis succeeded in striking more fear and uncertainty in his family.

"Until when will the deadline be extended? Those who know Roberto really feel the danger he is in now," the activist priest said in Filipino.

Reyes called on the predominantly Catholic nation to say prayers for Tarongoy and help him overcome the fear and anxiety he is now suffering.

"Good Friday is a few days away but for Robert Tarongoy, it has been Good Friday for many months now," he said.

"The interminable anxiety and fear over an uncertain future is daily torture. I am sure that like Angelito Nayan, he survives on prayers, his own and that of his loved ones," added Reyes, referring to the Filipino volunteer worker of the United Nations who went through a hostage ordeal himself last year in Afghanistan. Nayan and two other UN workers were released after negotiations.

Nayan attended the Mass along with activist-members of the clergy belonging to the group called Gomburza, and representatives of various cause-oriented organizations.

Though Nayan refused to be interviewed by reporters, Reyes told reporters that the UN worker expressed hope that God will also protect Tarongoy in the same way that he was protected when he was kidnapped in Afghanistan.

"His (Nayan’s) presence was enough," the priest said.

Tarongoy was seized with an American co-worker in November from their Baghdad compound. The fate of Roy Hallums is unknown.

The kidnappers have called on Manila to pull the estimated 6,000 Filipinos working as support staff on US military bases out of Iraq as the Arroyo government struggles to explain that they are in the country of their own free will to earn a living.

Reyes said Tarongoy’s kidnapping in Iraq could have been averted if government only provided enough jobs in the Philippines.

"More than Robert’s kidnapping, we should talk about the war in Iraq. Do we need to participate in such a war? Do our workers really need to go there (Iraq) and risk their lives? What we need is not a war but jobs here in the Philippines," he stressed.

"Government and the private sector should join hands in creating jobs for our workers here. They (workers) should not go abroad to find dangerous jobs anymore. There should be no more needless stress and no more needless risks," Reyes added.

In a related development, efforts were also underway to free other foreigners held in violence-torn Iraq.

More details of the liberation of an Italian hostage emerged, with reports that an Italian intelligence agent killed by US soldiers had wanted to keep secret from the US military details of his mission in Baghdad to free journalist Giuliana Sgrena.

In ongoing bloodshed eight people were killed in various incidents mainly in the northern part of the country, including a presumed Turkish truck driver.

Meanwhile, Serge July, director of France’s Liberation newspaper was in Baghdad to try to help efforts to find kidnapped reporter Florence Aubenas.

The unidentified abductors released on March 1 a video showing the Frenchwoman, who went missing in early January, looking gaunt and disheveled, begging for help.

In Stockholm, the family of an Iraqi-Swede kidnapped at the end of January said in a radio interview that friends of Minas Ibrahim al-Yusufi had received a text message from his captors and that negotiations had started to free the secretary general of Iraq’s Christian Democratic Party.

Controversy hounded the release of Sgrena, held for a month in Iraq.

Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence officer who died in a hail of US gunfire on Baghdad’s airport road as he escorted her to safety, did not want his operation coordinated with the US military, La Repubblica newspaper reported Saturday. — With AFP