ZAMBOANGA CITY — Rev. Giancarlo Bossi, the Italian Roman Catholic priest held captive for over a month in the southern Philippines, said he wants to return to his parish after his captors assured him he would not be seized again.
“I want to go back to Payao and help the people there,” the lanky 57-year-old priest told reporters yesterday in this southern port city, where he was brought hours after his release. “My heart is still in Payao.”
Gunmen seized Bossi on June 10 in Payao town of Zamboanga Sibugay province while he was on his way to another village to conduct mass.
He was freed at about 9 p.m. in the town of Sultan Naga Dimaporo (formerly Karomatan) in the province Lanao Del Norte, about 80 kilometers west of Payao.
“I have already talked to my family. I told them I would not go back to Italy. I want to stay here for a while,” he said.
He said he was assured by my kidnappers that they would not seize him again.
Chief Superintendent Jaime Caringal, a regional police commander, said the priest was barefoot as he was left by his captors on a road where he was picked up by a team of police.
Bossi was wearing a black jacket and loose brown trousers that did little to ward off the chill. “My kidnappers (took) me to the road. We walked last night about two hours,” he told reporters.
Bossi said he was treated well, except for the repeated forced marches through the jungle as his captors tried to evade pursuers. He said he had braced himself for months of captivity because two other Italian priests were kidnapped and held for that long several years ago. But he said his captors treated him “with respect.”
“I never had the sensation that they wanted to kill me, nor did I ever receive a death threat or violence of any kind,” Bossi told the MISNA missionary news agency. “The food wasn’t great: rice, salt and dried fish. As a result I lost some weight. But I also stopped smoking; I haven’t touched a cigarette since June 27.”
Italian Premier
Bossi’s release was first announced on Thursday night by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi in Rome.
When Prodi got word of the release, he jubilantly announced it to reporters outside his Rome office, saying he was “truly emotional, happy.”
“I am moved and happy. Today was his mother’s birthday, a very happy coincidence,” Prodi told a news conference as the priest was being taken to Zamboanga City from Lanao del Norte.
Pope Benedict XVI said last week that he was praying daily for Bossi, and Italy sent a longtime diplomat, Margherita Boniver, to the Philippines to try to work for his release.
From Zamboanga City, Bossi yesterday flew together with Italian Ambassador Rubens Anna Fedele to Manila for a brief meeting with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at Malacañang Palace.
“We rejoice over the safe release of Father Bossi,” Arroyo said in a statement before a private meeting with the priest.
“We pray that he could soon gather his strength and recover from his ordeal.”
Bossi later said the president told him that many people had been working hard for his freedom.
Arroyo also mentioned that 14 Philippine Marines were killed in an attack by Moro rebels while they were searching for him on Basilan Island in the south.
In the search for Bossi earlier this month, the military lost 14 Marines, including 10 who were beheaded, threatening a peace process in the south.
“I feel like I am responsible for their death because they were there looking for me. Instead they were ambushed,” said a teary-eyed Bossi during a news conference.
Ransom
Caringal said Bossi’s release came after negotiations involving a former town mayor of Basilan, Hajarun Jamiri.
Bossi said his captors introduced themselves as Abu Sayyaf, the Jemaah Islamiyah-linked group blamed for numerous cases of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in the southern Philippines.
But police officials said Bossi’s captors were not Abu Sayyaf militants but rogue members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the main Muslim separatist group that has been involved in peace talks with the government.
MILF officials denied any link with the kidnappers, although MILF Vice Chairman Ghazali Jaafar promised they would coordinate with the government in investigating whether two possible suspects have ties with the guerrillas.
Bossi said there were 11 men who snatched him at gunpoint near his church in Payao. “They said, ‘We are sorry, we are kidnapping you only for money,’” he said, adding that his abductors were taking orders from an unnamed person by mobile telephone and were seeking a 50 million-peso ($1.11-million) ransom to raise money to prepare for an unspecified rebel operation.
“I was the means to get a ransom. That’s what they told me,” he said.
Philippine officials insisted no ransom was paid, and Bossi said he did not see any exchange of money.
Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno, appearing with Bossi at the news conference, strongly denied any ransom was paid.
“There were some demands for ransom,” he said. “We discussed this matter with the Italian ambassador and the agreement we all arrived at was there would be zero ransom given.”
“We would pay nothing to these kidnappers for the safety of Father Bossi. From that time on, it was touch and go,” Puno said.
There have been widespread claims at home and abroad that Italy has paid ransom to free hostages in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past.
In April, for example, the founder of the Italian aid group Emergency charged that the Prodi government paid $2 million to the Taleban to free an Italian photographer last year. The government did not deny the claim, saying only that it was using the same negotiating tactics that were used by the previous government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
(With reports from AP & Reuters)
