Abu Sayyaf bandit in 'Jehovah' members' kidnapping falls

ZAMBOANGA CITY - Government intelligence service and police operatives tracked down and captured on Thursday a suspected member of the Abu Sayyaf Group tagged in the kidnapping of six members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Sulu in 2002.

Chief Inspector Ariel Huesca, spokesman of the Zamboanga Peninsula regional police office, identified the suspect as Ustadz Nual Pajiran, who carries the aliases Abdurahman and Abu Kudama.

Huesca said Pajiran has a standing warrant of arrest for the six counts of kidnapping and serious illegal detention case in connection with the 2002 kidnapping of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Patikul, Sulu.

Two of the male victims were beheaded on the same day of their abduction while the four others were released months later after the alleged payment of ransom.

Huesca said government intelligence operatives caught up on Pajiran in Barangay Tictapul in Vitali district, some 70 kilometers east of this city.

The combined elements of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Regional Intelligence Division (RID), police Special Action Force (SAF), Philippine Center for Transnational Crime (PCTC), Naval Intelligence Service Group (NISG), and the Presidential Anti-Organize Crime Council (PAOCC) swooped down on the suspect’s safe house and arrested him at about 2:30 a.m. Thursday.

The suspect was immediately brought to a police intelligence headquarters in this city and placed under tactical interrogation.