By Julie Alipala, Jeoffrey Maitem
Mindanao Bureau Last updated 07:09pm (Mla time) 06/11/2007
ZAMBOANGA CITY — Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi was kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf bandits, a ranking official of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) said.
Mohagher Iqbal, chief negotiator for the MILF, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net, that Abdusalam Akiddin alias Commander Kiddie, the alleged leader of the men who seized the priest in Payao town, Zamboanga Sibugay province, Sunday morning, is a member of the Abu Sayyaf.
“If the captor’s leader is Kiddie, definitely it’s work of the Abu Sayyaf. Kiddie has long joined the Abu Sayyaf organization,” Iqbal said in a phone interview.
The MILF is engaged in peace negotiations with the government.
“Our counterpart in the peace negotiation has also asked about the identity of this person. I told them that Kiddie is a member of Abu Sayyaf and had been linked in previous kidnappings in Zamboanga Peninsula,” Iqbal said.
Iqbal said they received information that the 57-year-old priest was brought to an island between Zamboanga and Basilan. But Marine Major General Benj Dolorfino, commander of government’s Ad Hoc Joint Action Group, insisted the captors were members of a MILF lost command.
“Our effort is concentrated in Sultan Naga Dimaporo town in Lanao del Norte where the Italian priest was brought by his captors. We are determining the exact location so we can contain it,” Dolorfino said.
“There was no ransom demand. And another MILF commander’s name surfaced. He is Jack. Right now, our troops in the area believe that the captors belong to an MILF lost command,” he added.
The MILF has denied its men were involved in the kidnapping. Bossi, a member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), was abducted in Barangay (village) Silal in Payao town while on his way to Barangay Bulawan to say mass.
Payao Mayor Joefer Mendoza said Bossi was riding his motorcycle after his Sunday mass at the Saint Paul Parish Church in Silal. Still in Silal, a habal-habal (motorcycle used to transport several passengers) driver identified only as Taboy, who accompanied Bossi in his travel to Bulawan, saw a rope blocking the road.
Mendoza said Taboy alighted from his motorcycle and tried to untie the rope when armed men suddenly appeared. The mayor said the abductors also took Taboy but later released him.
“We learned about the kidnapping when Taboy was released,” he said. Police recovered food items, bottled water, canned goods and the rope from the place where Bossi was abducted.
“It indicates that the kidnappers were staking out, watching and monitoring the priest’s movements and routine,” Mendoza said in a phone interview.
Soon after the incident, reports of the kidnapping spread around Payao. Mendoza said residents got angry and demanded that authorities immediately work for the safe release of their priest.
“Our people see Father Bossi as their Big Father. They always call him Father Giant and everyone here is so angry about the kidnapping,” Mendoza said.
Residents call Bossi “Father Giant” or “Gentle Giant” because of his physical built. The priest from Milan, Italy is more than two meters in height, according to PIME Regional Superior of the Philippines Gianni Battista Sandalo.
“He is very tall and well built. Fellow priests call him Balu or Big Foot,” Sandalo said.
Bossi is also “a very jolly person; he roars with laughter and talks a lot,” Sandalo added. Asked why Big Foot, Sandalo said Bossi refuses to wear shoes and prefers to walk around in flip-flops.
He recalled that when Bossi was directed to go to the Bureau of Immigration for his papers, “he was sent home because he was wearing slippers.”
Mendoza said children love Bossi who, with his built, can carry about five of them. “His work is mostly pastoral that is why he moves around a lot in this community,” the mayor said.
Bossi is the first and the only foreign priest who managed to enter Payao and establish a parish in the early 1980s.
“He is the first priest to come to our town, that is why people love him so much,” Mendoza said.
Bossi left Payao in the 1990s due to a “call of duty,” according to Sandalo but returned to the town in April this year. Fr. Angel Calvo of the Claretian Missionary Fathers and president of the Peace Advocates Zamboanga, described his best friend as a “poor people’s priest.”
“He loves to stay, sleep and eat with the poor community,” Calvo said. His love for his parishioners, Sandalo explained, is “the reason why despite our repeated advises to him about the security, he kept coming back to his parish.”
Colonel Jovencio Magalso, 102nd Army Brigade Commander, told the Inquirer that he was planning to request the religious communities to “let them pull out temporarily their foreign missionaries in the peninsula for security reasons.”
“I still have to consult them [missionaries] and get their opinions,” he said.
PIME has been in the Philippines since 1968. It has 22 priests assigned all over the country, mostly in Luzon and Mindanao. Sandalo said despite the incident, “we are not going to pull out our missionaries.”
Bossi is the lone PIME missionary in the Zamboanga Peninsula. “We become more strong in this kind of situation. When we took our vows, we are ready to get in touch with the situation,” Sandalo said.
In 1985, PIME priest Tullio Favali was killed by cult leader Norberto Manero in Tulunan, North Cotabato.
In 1992, PIME priest Salvatore Carzedda was shot dead by a still unknown assailant in Zamboanga City. In 1998, Fr. Luciano Benedetti, also of PIME, was kidnapped. In 2001, Italian priest Guiseppe Pierantoni, SCJ, was kidnapped in Dimataling, Zamboanga del Sur. The Armed Forces of the Philippines and the police have deployed forces to scour the seas and coastlines of Zamboanga Peninsula.
Commodore Emilio Marayag, commander of the Naval Forces Western Mindanao, said Navy helicopter and three gunboats have been dispatched to the peninsula for the search and rescue operation. The “time element is very important. We received the report after lunch [Sunday]; until now we don’t have any sightings or leads.
If the report came early, we could have spotted the pump boats,” Marayag said. But Brigadier General Edgardo Gurrea, chair of the GRP’s CCCH, said he was confident the MILF would be of big help. Gurrea said the MILF has a good record to show when it comes to negotiating for the immediate release of kidnap victims. “We have big hopes that the MILF [will succeed] because this is not the first time they helped the government,” Gurrea said. MILF spokesperson Eid Kabalu said the government’s “high hopes” would be “a big challenge for all of us.”
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