Abu Sayyaf rebs free gas station cashier

ZAMBOANGA CITY — A gasoline station cashier, who said he was kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in Tawi-Tawi, was released last Saturday after nearly 10 months in captivity, police said.

Sherwin Caraig, 24, was abandoned by his captors late Saturday in the Sulu town of Indanan and was immediately taken into police protection, said Chief Superintendent Akmad Omar, police director of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Caraig’s kidnapping had not previously been made public.

Omar said a secret mission had been ongoing to recover Caraig, but his abduction had been kept from the public for security reasons.

Omar said no ransom was paid for Caraig’s release. But the Agence France Press quoted sources as saying that Sulu authorities had handed over P100,000 in ransom to secure his freedom.

Caraig’s mother, Pilar Pajulas, also denied that they paid any ransom to her son’s captors nor had the kidnappers contacted them for such a demand.

"It was all answered by our prayers that my son be freed soon. Now he is with us again. We will never allow him to go back to that place again," she said.

Caraig said he was kidnapped in Tawi-Tawi on Nov. 29 last year by eight to nine armed men whom he later learned to be a faction of the notorious Abu Sayyaf group, now on the run from a massive military operation on Sulu.

Officials said the gunmen apparently mistook Caraig as the owner of the gasoline station in Tawi-Tawi, where he worked after moving there from this port city.

He said he was taken by boat to Sulu and had been "very mobile" as the group allegedly tried to contact his family in Zamboanga City.

"I am still confused why they took me hostage," he was quoted by police as saying as he was reunited with his family.

Caraig himself said he repeatedly explained to his captors that he was a poor man and not the son of the gas station owner.

"I think they grew tired of taking care of me, of feeding me," he told reporters. "They were also finding it difficult to move because of me."

Caraig said he had heard the gunmen refer to themselves as Abu Sayyaf guerrillas and often heard them speak in the rebels’ native Tausug dialect.

Abu Sayyaf offshoot groups are also holding four female members of the Jehovah’s Witness sect and, separately, three Indonesians in Sulu’s jungles. The Filipinas were seized last month and the Indonesians in June.

The military has deployed more than 4,000 troops on Sulu as part of its "Operation End-game" to crush the gunmen and recover all hostages. Deadly clashes have left at least a dozen soldiers dead since the operation was launched last month.

Elsewhere in Mindanao, the military launched yesterday a search and rescue operation to recover four teachers of the Mindanao State University who were seized in Lanao del Sur last Friday. — Roel Pareño, Christina Mendez