Antique buyer seized in Maguindanao

DATU ODIN, Maguindanao ,Philippines  – A buyer of antiques from Mandaluyong City was snatched yesterday in a roadside hotel not far from a police station and the headquarters here of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.

Chief Superintendent Bienvenido Latag, director of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao police, said the victim, Dominador Mendoza Berdin, 52, was to transact with local contacts at the Hill Side Resort Hotel here when he was seized.

Latag said the contacts Berdin was to meet were the ones who forced him into a waiting vehicle and spirited him to a riverside village about a kilometer from the hotel.

The leader of Berdin’s kidnappers was initially identified as Mods, who disguised himself as a prospective source of antiques that Berdin could buy.

The kidnappers escaped with their captive upstream toward Kabuntalan town aboard two pump boats, according to witnesses.

Investigators said they learned of the kidnapping from Berdin’s companion, a 39-year-old Maguindanaon businesswoman named Merriam Acob.

Inspector Lendsy Sinsuat, chief of the municipal police, said Acob reported the incident to them and identified some of the kidnappers of Berdin as well.

Responding policemen led by Sinsuat arrested two of the kidnappers, a certain Norodin Malik and Ryan Usman, while trying to escape after they brought Berdin to their getaway pump boats along the Tamontaka River in Barangay Capiton here.

Datu Odin Mayor Datu Lester Sinsuat has ordered all of his 34 constituent-barangay chairmen to help the police locate Berdin and his captors.

Cotabato City Vice Mayor Muslimin Sema, chairman of the most dominant of two factions of the Moro National Liberation Front, said he has mobilized MNLF members along riverside barangays here to help identify the kidnappers of Berdin.

Brig. Gen. Rey Ardo, commander of the Army’s 6th ID, said Army Special Forces units in riverside villages have been ordered to help chase the kidnappers using their watercraft.