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ZAMBOANGA CITY: Kidnappers have freed a local trader after almost
two weeks in captivity in Mindanao, officials said Tuesday.
Officials said Inocente Bautista was released
unharmed by his captors near the farming village of Manicahan. It
was not known whether the victim’s family paid ransom or not.
“I received reports that the victim was freed
in the vicinity of Manicahan last night and he is undergoing
debriefing now,” Mayor Celso Lobregat told reporters without
elaborating further.
Three gunmen abducted Bautista on May 27 after
barging into his office in Cabato Road near the village of Tetuan in
Zamboanga City.
No group claimed responsibility for the
kidnapping of Bautista whose family runs the wholesale company
called Western Mindanao Corporation that sells groceries and other
consumer products. His release coincided with the Abu Sayyaf
kidnapping of a Manila-based television reporter Ces Drilon and her
two cameramen Jimmy Encarnacion and Angelo Valderama, including a
Muslim university professor Octavio Dinampo while they were pursuing
a story in Sulu province.
Zamboanga City has been attacked in the past by
the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group, which bombed civilian targets
and in several occasions kidnapped foreigners among them a German
canning executive, a Belgian agrarian expert, a Taiwanese matriarch
and Chinese traders.
Just last month, a bomb explosion ripped through
a two-storey building near a major military base here, killing three
people and wounding more than a dozen others. Two bombs were also
detonated in May at a Catholic church and in front of a commercial
building, but there were no reports of casualties.
-- Al Jacinto
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