Free store owner, ulamas ask captors

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Threatening them with murkah (diving wrath), Muslim clerics here yesterday called on armed men holding a Filipino-Chinese store owner captive to set him free and stop their criminal activities that have embarrassed local Muslims.

Ustadz Jaafar Ali, spokesman of the 3,000-member National Ulama Council of the Philippines, also condemned last Saturday night’s kidnapping here of hardware store owner Adin Yu, 53.

“Kidnapping is haram (forbidden) among Muslims,” Ali said in a radio interview, describing the kidnapping as “un-Islamic and handiwork of evil.”

Ali said Yu’s kidnappers must free him because Islam prohibits any believer to take advantage of anyone.

Yu, owner of the Yu Kian Gian Hardware, was heading home from a hotel here with his wife when four men grabbed and forced him into a waiting car. His wife managed to escape unhurt.

Yu’s kidnappers have reportedly demanded P50-million ransom in exchange for his liberty.

Chief Superintendent Gil Mineses, Region 12 police director, said they have received reports from informants, among them local officials and religious leaders, that Yu is now being held captive in Maguindanao where there are known lairs of kidnapping syndicates.

“Everything is being done now to locate him,” he said.

Lt. Col. Dorotheo Jose Jalandoni, commanding officer of the anti-kidnapping Marine Battalion Landing Team 7 here, said they got information that Yu’s kidnappers demanded P50 million in two phone calls to the victim’s relatives.

Jalandoni, however, said the Yu family is reluctant to talk to investigators on the kidnappers’ demand.

“We understand them. We cannot force them to talk. They are worried about the safety of the captive,” Jalandoni said.

Army intelligence sources said the group holding Yu captive is jointly led by three Moro secessionist rebels – Teng Saguile and a certain Kalbu and Tunggal – and operates in marshes in the first district of Maguindanao, which is supposedly covered by a ceasefire between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Yu Beng Chua, president of the Cotabato Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the business community here remains hopeful that Yu would be released soon and that authorities would succeed in putting an end to the kidnappings.