ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines, 29 July 2006 — Security forces captured three members of a gang implicated in the 2002 kidnapping of a South Korean man in the southern Philippines, officials said yesterday.
Policemen, backed by soldiers, cornered the suspects during a raid on an alleged hideout of the Abu Sofia group in the village of Bulalo in Maguindanao’s Sultan Kudarat town on Thursday afternoon.
“We finally got them,” Col. Frank del Prado, a spokesman for the army’s 6th Infantry Division, told Arab News by phone from Maguindanao. He said soldiers seized automatic weapons from the three men, who were linked to the kidnapping of Jae Keon Yoon and Filipino hotel owner Carlos Belonio in Palimbang town in Sultan Kudarat province in February 06, 2002.
Belonio was accompanying Yoon, a guest at his Tierra Verde Hotel, to buy nickel bars purportedly recovered from a Japanese wartime hoard when they were kidnapped.Yoon was freed after 22 weeks in captivity, while the Filipino had been released earlier after allegedly paying a huge ransom.
Kidnapping activities persist despite the huge presence of government forces in the southern region of Mindanao.
On Thursday, unidentified gunmen snatched a 58-year-old woman and her son in the troubled island of Jolo, about 950 km south of Manila.
Brig. Gen. Alexander Aleo said Jacky Selvin, a bakery owner, and Jeffrey Selvin, 27, were seized at around 5.30 a.m. outside their house at Gandasuli road in downtown Jolo.
No group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, but the island is a known lair of the Abu Sayyaf group, blamed for the series of terrorism and kidnappings.
Last month, suspected Abu Sayyaf gunmen freed kidnapped 41-year old pharmacy owner Bren Vergara after his family allegedly paid more than one million pesos in ransom.
The man was snatched April 12 together with his ailing 70-year old mother Caridad Vergara, who had been earlier freed near Jolo town.