Pentagon woman captive rescued

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — A woman grocer held captive by the notorious Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang for nearly two years has been rescued by security forces after a firefight in Maguindanao the other day, authorities said.

A combined team of Task Force Tugis, an anti-crime unit of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police rescued businesswoman Zuela Cansi, 53, in Barangay Kurintem, Datu Odin Sinsuat town.

Cansi’s daughter, Liezel, who spoke on her mother’s behalf during a press conference at the 6th ID’s headquarters here yesterday, revealed that "a third party," whom she refused to identify, volunteered to negotiate with the kidnappers, led by Pentagon leader Mayangkang Saguile, but ran away with the P1 million which their family raised as ransom.

Farmers tipped off the police and the military about Cansi’s whereabouts when they spotted her with her captors in Barangay Kurintem.

The kidnappers, armed with M-16 and M-14 assault rifles, shot it out with the policemen and soldiers, but later retreated and abandoned Cansi after sensing that government reinforcements were closing in on them.

"We ought to thank God for the rescue of my mother," Liezel said.

Saguile, implicated in 37 kidnappings since the early 1990s, carries a P1-million bounty on his head.

Col. Felipe Tabas, commander of Task Force Tugis, and Chief Superintendent Sukarno Ikbala, ARMM police director, said Saguile’s group managed to hold Cansi captive for so long because they kept her in the Liguasan Marsh, a 200,000-hectare delta at the boundary of Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and North Cotabato, which has an extremely difficult terrain.

Cansi, who owns a store in the town proper of Lambayong, said he had seen Saguile "face-to-face" in many occasions during her captivity in secluded portions of the Liguasan Marsh, a known lair of the Pentagon kidnap gang and lately, of Indonesian operatives of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Edilberto Adan, the new chief of the Armed Forces Southern Command, presented to the media yesterday Norham Amil, alias Commander Ramsie, a Pentagon leader implicated in the kid—nappings of Italian priest Guiseppe Pierantoni in Dima—taling, Zamboanga del Sur and five Chinese engineers in North Cotabato, both in 2001. — With Roel Pareño