ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / June 10, 2008) – Kidnappers have freed a local trader after almost two weeks in captivity in the southern Philippines, officials said Tuesday.
Officials said Inocente Bautista was released unharmed by his captors near the farming village of Manicahan. It was unknown 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 ther were pursuing a story in Sulu province.
Foreign embassies have previously warned their citizens not to travel to Zamboanga City and in some parts in the southern Philippines because of threats of kidnappings and terrorism.
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. (Mindanao Examiner)
