Kidnapped gas station owner freed

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Kidnappers yesterday freed a gasoline station owner snatched last Sunday in Datu Piang, Maguindanao.

Officials in Datu Piang, some 50 kilometers southeast of this city, confirmed that kidnap victim Rodulfo Chio, 61, was set free by his captors at a residential area at the Don E. Sero district here.

Chio was seized by five armed men who forced him into a waiting getaway car and spirited him to a nearby marsh, a known lair of kidnappers and radical Islamists said to have links with foreign terrorist organizations.

Relatives of Chio, some of them municipal and barangay officials, said his family paid the kidnappers at least P6 million in exchange for his freedom.