Another trader kidnapped in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY, Philippines– Unidentified armed men kidnapped last Saturday night the owner of the city’s oldest hardware store.

More than 10 people have also been abducted in Maguindanao, North Cotabato and Lanao del Sur provinces in recent months.

Police said the latest suspects took Adin Yu, whose family also operates a restaurant and a bakery at the city’s main commercial district, at about 9 p.m. while the victim was on board his car on his way home from the casino at the Estosan Garden Hotel, less than 50 meters away from the heavily guarded entrance to the regional operations compound of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

The gate to the enclosed ARMM complex is guarded by a platoon of combat-ready policemen from the Regional Mobile Group.

Investigators said Yu was forced into a getaway vehicle by gunmen who allegedly brought the captive to a secluded area at the eastern side of the city, a marshy area also known as gateway to at least three Maguindanao towns that are believed to be the base of kidnappers identified with the feared Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang.

Chief Inspector Jomar Alexis Yap, spokesman for Central Mindanao Regional 12 Police Office said the abductors used a red Toyota Corolla car with license plates NXY-153 backed up by two armed men riding tandem on a motorcycle.

Yap said investigators are coordinating with the management of the Estosan Garden Hotel after the abduction and the commotion were caught by the hotel’s closed-circuit television camera.

Police said the video provided by the hotel’s chief security guard Crisanto Sarno, showed Yu and his wife Cathy entering the hotel at around 8 p.m. The couple often visits the hotel to play in the casino.

After an hour, the couple came out of the hotel but two unidentified men, who were waiting in front of the hotel approached them and dragged Yu who was forced to get inside a getaway vehicle.

The hotel security guards tried to stop the kidnappers but the armed men opened fire that triggered a brief exchange of gunfire.

The kidnappers managed to escape along with the victim.

Police said the victim’s wife was not hurt in the abduction, which apparently targeted Yu.

Yap said hot pursuit was conducted and after 30 minutes, authorities recovered the abandoned getaway car on Don Andres Alonzo Street in Barangay Rosary Heights 11.

“The kidnappers were forced to abandon the car after the vehicle bumped into an electric post,” Yap said.

The kidnap of Yu was preceded by the kidnappings here last August of trader Nelson Tay and businesswoman Conchita Tan last October.

Tay, a dealer of imported foams for beds and for industrial uses, was snatched by gunmen that barged into his establishment along a busy street here while Tan, whose family owns a big hardware store, was abducted by armed suspects near her house at the downtown area.

The kidnappers released the two captives after their families paid ransom.

Yu was kidnapped only about two months after the Armed Forces deployed here the Marine Battalion Landing Team 7 to assist local police in the operations against kidnap-for-ransom gangs.

Kidnappings in the city started in the early 1980s, but the situation worsened in the 1990s with the emergence of more than a dozen gangs, mostly led by rogue Moro secessionist rebels that have since continued to prey on members of Central Mindanao’s Chinese-Filipino community.

All of the kidnap gangs that operate in Cotabato City and surrounding towns are holding out in nearby Maguindanao towns where the Moro Islamic Liberation Front maintains several camps.

The MILF and the government, under all interim security agreements and the comprehensive ceasefire agreement crafted in 1997, are supposed to help each other in interdicting criminals, local and foreign terrorists holding out in rebel enclaves duly acknowledged by the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police. – With Cecille Suerte Felipe