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By Al Jacinto, Correspondent
ZAMBOANGA CITY: Abu Sayyaf militants have
kidnapped a Filipino television journalist, two cameramen and a
Muslim university professor on the southern island of Sulu, police
said Monday.
Police said Ces Oreña-Drilon, a multi-awarded
broadcaster of the television network ABS-CBN, her crew and their
companion, Octavio Dinampo, were taken at the village of Kulasi in
the town of Maimbung. Drilon’s team arrived in Sulu on Saturday
from Zamboanga City, said Supt. Julasirim Kasim, the provincial
police chief.
“We received reports that the four were
abducted by the Abu Sayyaf led by Albader Parad,” Kasim told The
Manila Times.
He said he believes Drilon and her companions
were taken to the hinterlands of Indanan town.
Dinampo teaches political science at the
Mindanao State University and is said to be helping Drilon in her
coverage. (See related front-page story.) The identities of the two
cameramen were not immediately known.
“There is no demand yet for ransom,” Kasim
said, adding, Sulu Gov. Sakur Tan convened the Crisis Management
Committee to address the situation.
“Governor Sakur Tan is very worried over the
safety of the victims, and we are doing everything to locate
them,” Kasim said.
Before the kidnapping
Drilon’s group was lodged at the Sulu State
College hostel in Jolo town, where they took two rooms and left
Saturday afternoon after ordering food good for 20 people, said the
local police chief Usman Pingay.
“We don’t know what really happened, and why
Drilon went without security to Maimbung,” he said in a separate
interview.
A hotel staff said he saw Drilon hurriedly left,
and that he even asked her where she was going. “She was really in
a hurry, and I even asked her where they were going; and Ces Drilon
only replied that they would just be nearby. They never came back
since Saturday.”
News blackout
ABS-CBN would neither confirm nor deny the
kidnapping. Sources told The Times that the network will release a
statement at 5 a.m. today.
On Monday afternoon, reporters covering Malacañang
were asked not to report the news for the safety of Drilon and her
companions, and that negotiations for their release was underway.
By mid-afternoon Monday, at least three radio
stations reported on Drilon’s kidnapping—dzIZ, dzEC and dzXL.
The radio station dzBB, owned by ABS-CBN’s rival network GMA 7,
reported Drilon was “missing” but that the kidnapping has yet to
be confirmed.
Jesus Dureza, presidential adviser on the peace
process, didn’t confirm the kidnapping either, saying they are
still monitoring the developments in the area.
“We have reports that Ms. Drilon remains in
the area together with her cameraman and a professor from the MSU
[Mindanao State University]. We don’t want to confirm at this time
that she was kidnapped,” Dureza told The Times in a telephone
interview.
He declined to say whether the government will
negotiate with the Abu Sayyaf, if the authorities are able to
confirm the kidnapping.
“I don’t want to jump into conclusions,”
he added. “As I said this is still being confirmed if really she
was abducted or not. I don’t want to give further comments.”
The Times received unconfirmed reports that the
al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf had taken Drilon to force government to
negotiate a truce with the bandits. State forces, with the help of
the US military, have been hunting down terrorist elements in
Mindanao.
Previous kidnappings
Drilon’s group was the second from the ABS-CBN
network to be kidnapped in Sulu in the past eight years. Reporter
Maan Macapagal and her cameraman, Val Cuenca, were also kidnapped on
the island while working on an exclusive report about the Abu Sayyaf.
Independent journalist Arlyn de la Cruz was also
kidnapped in Sulu while covering the Abu Sayyaf. Another
photojournalist, Gene Boyd Lumawag, was shot in the head by an Abu
Sayyaf militant while taking a photograph of the sunset in Sulu
several years ago.
The Abu Sayyaf had also seized foreign
journalists covering the group’s kidnapping of 21 Asian and
Western tourists from Sabah. Most of those kidnapped were freed in
exchange for ransom.
-- With Angelo S. Samonte and Espie A. Vidal
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