AFP, MILF rescue Tsinoy trader
CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao, Philippines - – Soldiers and guerillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rescued at dawn yesterday a Filipino-Chinese businesswoman kidnapped by bandits last May 14 in North Upi, Maguindanao.
The victim, So Ken Chew Mantigue, was immediately turned over by the joint government-MILF ceasefire committee to Brig. Gen. Rey Ardo of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division here after her rescue.
The 54-year-old Mantigue was tending the counter of their family grocery store at the town proper of North Upi, Maguindanao when the kidnappers, disguised as customers, grabbed and forced her into a waiting getaway car and spirited her to a marshy area in the first district of the province.
Col. Prudencio Asto, chief of the 6th ID’s public affairs office, said the victim was abandoned by her captors after sensing that combatants of the division and MILF guerillas operating under the joint ceasefire committee have surrounded their hideout in a marsh in Kabuntalan.
“Our division commander is glad that the victim has been reunited with her family and is thankful to all groups and local officials that helped in all the operations meant to set her free,” Asto said.
The government and the MILF are bound by an interim security agreement crafted in July 1997 mandating both sides to mutually cooperate in addressing criminality in areas covered by the ceasefire.
The captors of Mantigue, earlier reported as led by a rogue guerilla commander named “Talyo,” have reported asked for a P20 million ransom, but lowered the amount to P10 million about three days before her rescue.
Mantigue was the fifth Filipino-Chinese trader kidnapped in Central Mindanao in the past eight months. Four of the victims, Nelson Tay, Conchita Tan, Adin Yu and Jinkee Lim Yap, were snatched one after another in nearby Cotabato City during the period.
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