Moro rebels free cockpit caretaker, driver

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Moro rebels set free late Thursday a Filipino-Chinese caretaker of the city’s biggest cockpit and her driver allegedly in exchange for P2-million ransom, local officials and key members of the business community said.

Senior Superintendent Willie Dangane, city police chief, said the victim, Lourdes Tan-Kian, and her driver, Bernardo Isidro, were released by their captors in Barangay Taviran in Datu Odin, Maguindanao, about 20 kilometers southwest of this city.

Local officials and businessmen alleged that relatives of Tan-Kian paid the kidnappers P2 million in prior negotiations without the knowledge of Dangane and the Army’s local anti-crime Task Force Tugis.

In a text message to reporters, Dangane said their intelligence operatives also received information from sources in Datu Odin town that a P2-million ransom was allegedly delivered to the kidnappers by a courier in the barangay where the captives were set free.

Tan-Kian and Isidro were snatched past 6 p.m. last May 30 by armed men while on their way home from the Kutangbato Cockpit, owned by businessman and former councilor Manuel Tan.

The armed men commandeered their vehicle and brought them to Kabuntalan town, a known lair of kidnappers, mostly Moro guerrillas wanted for various crimes, in Maguindanao.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the kidnappers were raising funds to sustain the operations of renegade forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) who have been on the run since August last year.

Ponce said the police and 6th ID recently placed local physicians under tight watch due to persistent intelligence reports that rebels would snatch them to treat their comrades who were wounded in recent encounters in Maguindanao.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu, however, dismissed Ponce’s allegations as mere “black propaganda,” saying their fighters are revolutionaries, not members of criminal gangs.