Kidnappers free Chinese trader

COTABATO CITY — Kidnappers released a wealthy Chinese businessman they had snatched last month, as Army men and members of the Marine-led Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) closed in on their lair in nearby Talayan, Maguindanao the other day.

Maj. Elmer Estilles, spokesman of the PAOCTF’s Minda-nao Area 1 Unit, said trader Arthur Yap was abandoned by his captors as they fled from soldiers who had started to cordon off their hideout in Talayan.

Yap was snatched last Nov. 1 in a daring attack by five gunmen who barged into his store in the town proper of North Upi, some 30 kilometers east of Talayan, and spirited him away aboard a commandeered vehicle.

Yap’s abductors, led by Mayangkang Saguile, who carries a P1-million price on his head, initially demanded a P10-million ransom, but later lowered the amount after local officials, led by Upi Mayor Datu Michael Sinsuat, negotiated for release without ransom.

Civilian volunteers, led by Sinsuat’s son, Datu Michael Jr., gunned down three of Saguile’s followers in a bungled kidnapping attempt in Upi two weeks after they snatched Yap.

Saguile, implicated in 33 kidnappings in Cotabato City and Maguindanao since 1993, is a known leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

His group also took part in the MILF’s takeover of the town hall of Talayan last January.

In another related development, a suspected kidnap-for-ransom gang snatched a member of a wealthy Filipino-Chinese clan in Angeles City, Pampanga last Monday, police said.

In a belated report, Superintendent Ramon Victorino, Angeles police chief, said the kidnappers seized Daniel Dy and his 12-year-old son Ruel, but later abandoned the boy in front of the Angeles Medical Center with instructions to relay their demands.

The boy said his father’s captors want the "last will and testament" of his late grandmother, Juanita Dy, who reportedly owned a vast tract of land in the commercial district of Angeles.

The father and son were shopping for Christmas gifts along Rizal street in Angeles when two men accosted and dragged them at gunpoint to a parked car.— With Ric Sapnu