S. Kudarat female store owner seized

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguin-danao — Suspected members of the notorious Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang snatched a businesswoman in Lambayong, Sultan Kudarat last Thursday, breaking a three month-lull in abductions in Central Mindanao.

Maj. Onting Alon, deputy spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the victim, Suela Cansi, 50, who owns a store at the town proper of Lambayong, was seized at gunpoint by five men, who forced her into a waiting red car which sped off toward the nearby Maguindanao town of S.K. Pendatun.

Alon, citing initial feedback from police and Army intelligence units in Sultan Kudarat, said the kidnappers barged into Cansi’s store at about 5:30 p.m. after waiting outside for 30 minutes inside their car.

Radio station dxOM said the car was found abandoned in Barangay Pimbalayan, some 10 kilometers away from the Lambayong poblacion.

Senior Superintendent Bonfilo Dacoco, Sultan Kudarat police director, said policemen and soldiers are now hot on the trail of the kidnappers.

"We are now doing our best to identify all of them and their mastermind," Dacoco said, adding that they could have escaped in the Liguasan Marsh.

Cansi’s captors have not contacted her family as of press time.

Lambayong officials are convinced that Cansi’s kidnappers belong to one of the gangs of the Pentagon, led by the elusive Tahir Alonto who now carries a P5-million prize on his head.

Cansi’s abduction came less than three months after Pentagon men, posing a car buyers, snatched Cotabato City automobile dealer Norman Sia while they were test-driving a Kia Pride he was selling to them.

Sia is reportedly being kept at the boundary of Talayan, Talitay and Datu Piang towns, all in Maguindanao. — With Ramil Bajo