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By Anthony Vargas, Reporter
The small band of gunmen holding
Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi as a hostage slipped through the
blockade set up by the military in Zamboanga Sibugay, a senior
military official said Monday.
Maj. Gen. Ben Mohammad Dolorfino
said Bossi’s kidnappers were no longer in a heavily forested area
of Naga town.
The group, believed to be led by
Madz Zacaria, “is in another province in mainland Mindanao,”
Dolorfino told a press briefing in Camp Aguinaldo.
Zacaria is said to have links
with the extremist group Abu Sayyaf.
Dolorfino, a marine general who
now heads the military’s National Capital Regional Command (Ncrcom)
is co-chairman of the Ad-hoc Joint Action Group (AHJAG) of the
government panel negotiating with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
But he said that while the
kidnappers were able to escape the dragnet in Naga, the MILF was
keeping track of them.
The MILF is helping government
forces track the group that took the 57-year-old Bossi.
Eid Kabalu, MILF spokesman, said
the group is demanding a ransom for their captive.
“We are talking millions in
pesos,” Kabalu told Agence France-Presse.
As of Sunday, the group,
numbering around 16, including Bossi, was seen by MILF spotters
traveling on foot, Dolorfino said.
“They also saw Father Bossi and
he is OK . . . according to MILF observers, although it was very
obvious that he was tired since they have been walking,” Dolorfino
said.
He refused to reveal the exact
location of the group but said it was around 20 kilometers from the
shoreline.
He said an Army battalion and two
MILF brigades were in the area where the group had been spotted.
The MILF was able to establish a
communication links with the group and are now conducting
negotiation to ensure the safe released of Fr. Bossi, Dolorfino
added.
“The situation now is contained
particularly the area where the kidnappers are, and there have been
negotiations. They have nowhere to run, their options are
limited,” Dolorfino said.
Bossi, a native of Milan, was
taken at gunpoint by masked gunmen in a village in Payao on June 10.
He is the third Italian priest to be kidnapped by bandits in the
Zamboanga peninsula in 10 years. Luciano Benedetti was kidnapped in
1998 and Guiseppe Pierantoni in 2000. Both were subsequently
released.
Italy and the Philippines have
rejected paying a ransom for his release.
 --With
AFP
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