RIYADH/MANILA, 10 November 2004 — The Saudi Arabia Trading and Construction Company (SATCCo) has sent representatives to Iraq in a bid to secure the release of Filipino accountant Robert Tarongoy from his captors, Arab News learned yesterday.
“The owner of the company has sent representatives to Iraq to get in touch with the captors...” said a company official, who asked not to be named.
The official said their representatives were sent to Baghdad immediately after Tarongoy, along with an American, a Nepalese and three Iraqis were seized by militants on Nov. 1 from a compound in Baghdad where they were staying. Two of the Iraqi hostages and the Nepalese have been freed.
The SATCCo official said he had no knowledge of how the Nepalese was freed.
“I have no information on what has happened or what is happening as far as Tarongoy is concerned. What I know for sure is that the Nepalese has been released and was dropped in front of our office in Iraq,” he said.
SATCCo has offices in Qatar, Iraq, and Jubail and Iraq in Saudi Arabia.
But officials in Manila said yesterday the captors are demanding a ransom of at least $12 million and the release of at least four prisoners from Abu Ghraib, the prison where US military guards were photographed beating and sexually humiliating Iraqi detainees.
“There is a group that called the company with some demands. Negotiations are ongoing through SATCCo,” Labor Secretary Paricia Santo Tomas told The Associated Press in Manila.
Philippine diplomats in Baghdad were keeping the interim Iraqi government aware of developments, she said.
Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo also said that Philippine officials were taking “direct action” to win the freedom of Tarongoy.
“Our approach is to take more direct action and rely on our own resources,” said Romulo, who had just returned from a trip to the Middle East, said he met various officials, media organizations and private individuals who “offered their support” in helping with Tarongoy’s release.
Meanwhile, the family of diplomat Angelito Nayan appealed to guerrillas who abducted him in Afghanistan to spare his life.
His sister Grace Nayan appealed to the kidnappers “to please spare his life and let him return to the Philippines. “The Filipino people wish nothing but the best for the people of Afghanistan. We have never been involved in your internal conflicts.”
She said her brother “went to help the people of Afghanistan as a volunteer — not to side with any political faction for any vested interest. He went to your country with the purest of intentions.”
Spokesmen for the kidnappers, who are demanding the release of Taleban prisoners and the withdrawal of UN troops from their country, have said negotiations between their group and Afghan officials began Sunday.
Nayan was abducted along with two other UN election workers in Afghanistan on Oct. 28.
Grace Nayan also called on fellow Filipinos to stop exploiting the crisis for their own political agenda.
She did not name any group. Some leftist organizations have urged President Arroyo to use the Nayan abduction, to denounce the US-led invasion of both countries and to stop cooperating in the post-war reconstruction.
“My brother’s life hangs in the balance. We pray and appeal for solidarity in this time of crisis,” Grace Nayan said. (Additional input from The Associated Press)
